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Book l_t\5 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



/3S C 7- 



A MEMORIAL 



OF 



ALICE AND PHGEBE CARY, 



WITH SOME OF THEIR LATER POEMS. 



BY 

'YVW. MARY CLEMMEr) AMES. 



ILLUSTRATED By TWO PORTRAITS ON STEEL. 



/ nw 







■ 

NEW YORK: 

PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON. 

©aminftrget 3S.fbcrs(He Dress. 

1873. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 

Hurd and Houghton, 
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE .'• 

STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY 

H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. 




Eri^V-AHRitc'hifi 





<>&>&■£? 




ALICE CARY CLYMER 

WHO, TO Till: < AUNTS A 

DAL'GHTFk's ! ! M| THIS 

KIAL OF I 

» 

ii SHtccttanatrln OrtJiatrtt, 

BV HER I RIEND AM' l 

MARY CLEMMEP AMES. 



PREFACE 



When, at the request of the brothers of Alice and 
Phoebe Cary, I sat down to write a Memorial of their 
lives, and, looking through the entire mass of their 
papers, found not a single word of their own referring 
in any personal way to themselves, every impulse of 
my heart impelled me to relinquish the task. To tell 
the story of any human life, even in its outward inci- 
dents, wisely and justly, is not an easy thing to do. 
But to attempt a tit memorial of two women whose 
Hves must be chiefly interpreted by inward rather than 
outward events, and solely from personal knowledge 
and remembrance, wras ponsibility that I was 

unwilling to assume. With the utter absence of any 
data of their own, it seemed to me that the lives of the 
Cary sisters could only be produced from the com- 
bined reminiscences of all their more intimate personal 
friends. Months were consumed in writing to, and 
in waiting for replies from, long-time friends of the 
sisters. All were willing, but alas! they "had de- 
stroyed all letters/' had forgotten " lots and lots of 
things that would have been interesting ;'' they were 
preoccupied, or sick ; and, after months of waiting, 



VI PREFACE. 

I sat where I began, with the mass of Alice's and 
Phoebe's unedited papers before me, and not an added 
line for their lives, with a new request, from their 
legatees and executors, that I should go on with the 
Memorial. 

Here it is. 

It has cost me more than labor. Every day I 
have buried my friends anew. Every line wrung from 
memory has deepened the wound of irreparable loss. 

From beginning to end my one purpose has been, 
not to write a eulogy, but to write justly. In depict- 
ing their birthplace and early life in Ohio, I have" 
quoted copiously from Phoebe's sketch of Alice, and 
Ada Carnahan's sketch of her Aunt Phoebe, both 
published in the (Boston) "Ladies' Repository," 
believing that that which pertained exclusively to their 
early family life could be more faithfully told by mem- 
bers of the family than by any one born outside of it. 
Save where full credit is given to others, I, alone, am 
responsible for the statements of this Memorial. Not 
a line in it has been recorded from " hearsay." Not 
a fact is given that I do not know to be true, either 
from my own personal knowledge, or from the lips of 
the women whose lives and characters it helps to 
represent. I make this statement as facts embodied 
by me before, in a newspaper article, have been pub- 
licly questioned. One writer went so far as to say in 
a public journal, that, " As she would not willingly mis- 
represent her, Mrs. Ames must have misunderstood 



PREFACE. Vil 

Alice Cary." I #<?£\?r misunderstood Alice Cary. She 
never uttered a word to me that I did not perfectly 
understand. I have never recorded a word of her 
that I did not know to be true, nor with any purpose 
but to do absolute justice to my dearest friend. This 
is a full and final reply to any query or doubt which 
this Memorial may suggest or call forth. All who 
read have a perfect right to criticise and to question ; 
but I shall not feel any obligation to make further 
reply. Life is too short and too precious to spend 
it in privately answering persons who " wish to be 
assured that the Cary sisters were not Universalists," 
or who cultivate original theories concerning their 
character or life. 

The poems following the Memorial have, with but 
three or four exceptions, never before been gath- 
ered within the covers of a book. The exdfeptions 
are Alice's " The Sure Witness," " One Dust," and 
" My Creed," all published before in the volume of 
her poems brought out by Hurd and Houghton, in 
1865, and reproduced here as special illustrations of 
her character, faith, and death. 

In parting with a portion of the treasures and " pic- 
tures of memory," it has been difficult sometimes to 
decide which to give and which to retain. Many, 
too precious for any printed page, were nevertheless 
such a part of the true souls from whom they ema- 
nated, that to withhold them seemed like defrauding the 
living for the sake of the dead. Thus some inci- 



Vill PREFACE. 

.dents are given solely because they are necessary to 
the perfect portrayal of the nature which they concern. 
No fact has been told which has not this significance. 
No line has been w r ritten for the sake of writing it. 
But as I cease, I feel more keenly even than when I 
began, how inadequate is any one hand, however con- 
scientious, to trace two lives so delicately and variously 
tinted, to portray two souls so finely veined with a 

many-shaded deep humanitv. 

M. C. A. 
October^ 1872. 



CONTENTS. 



9 

• CHAPTER I. page 

THE . HOUSE OF THEIR BIRTH. — THEIR FATHER AND 

10THER. — ANCESTRY, CHILDHOOD, AND EARLY YOUTH. I 

CHAPTER II. 

EARLY STRUGGLES AND SUCCESS 20 

CHAPTER III. 

THEIR HOME. — HABITS OF LIFE AND OF LABOR. — THE 

SUMMER OF 1869 38 

CHAPTER IV. 

THEIR SUNDAY EVENING RECEPTIONS 59 

CHAPTER V. 

ALICE CARY. — THE WOMAN 70 

CHAPTER VI. 

ALICE CARY. — THE WRITER 99 

CHAPTER VII. 

ALICE'S LAST SUMMER 130 

CHAPTER VIII. 

ALICE'S DEATH AND BURIAL I4I 

CHAPTER IX. 

PHCEBE CARY. — THE WRITER 155 

CHAPTER X. 

PHOZBE CARY. — THE WOMAN 183 



X CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XI. 

PHCEBE'S LAST SUMMER. — DEATH AND BURIAL . 208 

CHAPTER XII. 

THE SISTERS COMPARED. — THEIR LAST RESTING-PLACE . 228 



LATER POEMS BY ALICE CARY. 

BALLADS AND LOVE SONGS 

the might of love . . . . .* . . . 239 

"the grace wife of keith " 242 

johnny right 245 

the lover's interdict 249 

the settler's christmas eve ...... 252 

the old story * 257 

balder's wife 258 

POEMS OF THOUGHT. 

UNDER THE SHADOW 260 

GOD IS LOVE 262 

LIFE'S MYSTERIES m . . 264 

POEMS OF NATURE AND HOME. 

A DREAM OF HOME 267 

EVENING PASTIMES . . . . . . . . 268 

FADED LEAVES 269 

THE LIGHT OF DAYS GONE BY 270 

A SEA SONG 272 

SERMONS IN STONES 273 

MY PICTURE 274 

MORNING IN THE MOUNTAINS 276 

THE THISTLE FLOWER 278 

•MY DARLINGS • .279 

THE FIELD SWEET-BRIER 281 

THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE HILL 283 

THE OLD HOUSE 284 



CONTENTS. XI 

FOR THE LOST. 

LOST LILIES 286 

A WONDER 288 

MOST BELOVED 289 

MY DARLINGS 29I 

IN DESPAIR 292 

WAIT 293 

RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

THE GOLDEN MEAN . . . 295 

THE FIRE BY THE SEA 297 

THE SURE WITNESS 299 

one dust ...:..:... 300 

MY CREED 301 

LAST POEMS. 

spent and misspent ........ 303 

last and best 3o4 

in the dark 305 

an invalid's plea 307 

the great question 308 

a penitent's plea 309 

putting off the armor 311 



LATER POEMS BY PHCEBE CARY. 
BALLADS 

THE CHRISTMAS SHEAF 315 

LITTLE GOTTLIEB 319 

RELIGIOUS POEMS 

CHRISTMAS 323 

PRODIGALS 325 

ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX 327 

OLD PICTURES 328 

THE PLAYMATES . . . . . . . -331 

' THE BAREFOOT BOY " 333 



xil CONTENTS. 



LOVE POEMS. 



amy's love-letter -335 

do you blame her ? 337 

SONG 338 

somebody's lovers 339 

LAST POEMS. 

nobody's child 341 

john g. whittier 342 

thou knowest 343 

I'IGHT . .' 345 

WAITING THE CHANGE 346 

THOU AND I 348 

SPRING FLOWERS 350 



A MEMORIAL 

OF 

ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE HOUSE OF THEIR BIRTH. — THEIR FATHER AND 
MOTHER. — ANCESTRY, CHILDHOOD, AND EARLY 
YOUTH. 

IN a brown house, " low and small," on a farm in 
the Miami Valley, eight miles north of Cincinnati, 
Ohio, Alice Cary was born on the 26th day of April, 
1820. In the same house, September 4, 1824, was 
born her sister and life-long companion, Phoebe. 

This house appeared and reappeared in the verse 
of both sisters, till their last lines were written. Their 
affection for it was a deep and life-long emotion. 
Each sister, within the blinds of a city house, uSed to 
shut her eyes and listen till she .thought she heard the 
rustle of the cherry-tree on the old roof, and smelled 
again the sweet-brier under the window. You will re- 
alize how perfectly it was daguerreotyped on Phoebe's 
heart when you follow two of the many pictures which 
she has left of it. Phoebe says : " The house was 
small, unpainted, without the slightest pretensions to 
architectural beauty. It was one story and a half in 
1 



2 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

height, the front looking toward the west and sep- 
arated from the high road by a narrow strip of door- 
yard grass. A low porch ran across the north of the 
house, and from the steps of this a path of blue flag- 
stones led to a cool, unfailing well of water a few 
yards distant. Close to the walls, on two sides, and 
almost pushing their strong, thrifty boughs through 
the little attic window, flourished several fruitful apple 
and cherry trees ; and a luxuriant sweet-brier, the only 
thing near that seemed designed solely for ornament, 
almost covered the other side of the house. Beyond 
the door-yard, and sloping toward the soutn, lay a 
small garden, with two straight rows of currant bushes 
dividing its entire length, and beds of vegetables laid 
out on either side. Close against the fence nearest 
the yard grew several varieties of roses, and a few 
hardy and common flowers bordered the walks. In 
one corner a thriving peach tre^ threw in summer its 
shade over a row of bee-hives, and in another its 
withered mate was supported and quite hidden by a 
fragrant bower of hop vines. A little in the rear of 
the dwelling stood the ample, weather-beaten barn, 
the busy haunt of the restless swallows and quiet, 
comfortable doves, and in all seasons the never-failing 
resort of the children. A stately and symmetrical 
oak, which had been kindly spared from the forest 
when the clearing for the house was made, grew near 
it, and in the summer threw its thick, cool shadow 
over the road, making a grateful shade for the tired 
traveller, and a pleasant playground for the children, 
whose voices, now so many of them stilled, once made 
life and music there through all the livelong day." 



THE HOUSE OF THEIR BIRTH. 



OUR HOMESTEAD. 

Our old brown homestead reared its walls 

From the wayside dust aloof, 
Where the apple-boughs could almost cast 

Their fruit upon its roof ; 
And the cherry-tree so near it grew 

That, when awake I've lain 
In the lonesome nights, I've heard the nmDs 

As they creaked against the pane ; 
And those orchard trees ! O, those orchard trees ! 

IVe seen my little brothers rocked 
In their tops by the summer breeze. 

The sweet-brier under the window-sill, 

Which the early birds made glad, 
And the damask rose by the garden fence, 

Were all the flowers we had. 
IVe looked at many a flower since then, 

Exotics rich and rare, 
That to other eyes were lovelier, 

But not to me so fair \ 
For those roses bright ! O, those roses bright ! 

I have twined them in my sister's locks 
That are laid in the dust from sight. 

We had a well — a deep, old well, 

Where the spring was never dry, 
And the cool drops down from the mossy stones 

Were falling constantly : 
And there never was water half so sweet 

As the draught which filled my cup, 
Drawn up to the curb by the rude, old sweep, 



4 ALICE AND PHCEBE GARY. 

That my father's hand set up ; 
And that deep, old well ! O, that deep, old well ! 

I remember now the plashing sound 
Of the bucket as it fell. 

Our homestead had an ample hearth, 

Where at night we loved to meet \ 
There my mother's voice was always kind, 

And her smile was always sweet ; 
And there I've sat on my father's knee, 

And watched his thoughtful brow, 
With my childish hand in his raven hair — 

That hair is silver, now ! 
But that broad hearth's light ! O, that broad hearth's 
light ! 

And my father's look, and my mother's smile, 
They are in my heart, to-night ! 

In her " Order for a Picture," which was her fa- 
vorite among all the poems she had ever written, Alice 
has given us another reflection of her first home upon 
earth, and its surroundings : — 

" O, good painter, tell me true, 

Has your hand the cunning to draw 
Shapes of things that you never saw ? 
Aye ? Well, here is an order for you. 

"Woods and cornfields, a little brown — 
The picture must not be over-bright — 
Yet all in the golden and gracious light 
Of a cloud, when the summer sun is down, 
Alway and alway, night and morn, 
Woods upon woods, with fields of corn 



THEIR FATHER AND MOTHER. 5 

Lying between them, not quite sere, 
And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom, 
When the wind can hardly find breathing-room 

Under their tassels, — cattle near, 

Biting shorter the short, green grass, 

And a hedge of sumach and sassafras, 

With bluebirds twittering all around, — 

(Ah, good painter, you can't paint sound !) — 

These, and the house where I was born, 

Low and little, and black and old, 

With children many as it can hold, 

All at the windows open wide, — 

Heads and shoulders clear outside : 

And fair young faces all ablush : 

Perhaps you may have seen, some day, 
Roses crowding the self-same way, 

Out of a wilding, wayside bush." 

In such a home were born Alice and Phoebe Cary : 
Alice, the fourth, and Phoebe, the sixth child of Robert 
Cary and Elizabeth Jessup, his wife. 

Phoebe, in her precious memorial of Alice, gives 
this picture of their father and mother : " Robert Cary 
was a man of superior intelligence, of sound princi- 
ples, and blameless life. He was very fond of read- 
ing, especially romances and poetry ; but early poverty 
and the hard exigencies of pioneer life had left him 
no time for acquiring anything more than the mere 
rudiments of a common school education ; and the 
consciousness of his want of culture, and an invincible 
diffidence born with him, gave him a shrinking, retir- 
ing manner, and a want of confidence in his own 
judgment, which was inherited to a large measure by 



6 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

his offspring. He was a tender, loving father, who 
sang his children to sleep with holy hymns, and habit- 
ually went about his work repeating the grand old 
Hebrew poets, and the sweet and precious promises 
of the New Testament of oiir Lord." Ada Carna- 
han, the child of Robert and Elizabeth Cary's oldest 
daughter, who inherits in' no small degree the fine 
mental gifts of her family, in her admirable sketch of 
her Aunt Phoebe, published in the Boston " Ladies' 
Repository," says of this father of poets : " When he 
had no longer children in his arms, he still went on 
singing to himself, and held in his heart the words 
that he had so often repeated. For him the common 
life of a farmer was idealized into poetry ; springtime 
and harvest were ever recurring miracles, and dumb 
animals became companionable. Horses and cattle 
loved him, and would follow him all over the farm, 
sure to receive at least a kind word or gentle pat, and 
perhaps a few grains of corn, or a lump of salt or 
sugar; and there was no colt so shy that would not eat 
out of his hand, and rub its head caressingly against 
his shoulder. Of his children, Alice the most resem- 
bled him in person, and all the tender and close sym- 
pathy with nature, and with humanity, which in her 
found expression, had in him an existence as real, if 
voiceless. In his youth he must have been handsome. 
He was six feet in height, and well proportioned, with 
curling black hair, bright brown eyes, slightly aquiline 
nose, and remarkably beautiful teeth." Those who 
saw him in New York, in the home of his daughters, 
remember him a silver-haired, sad-eyed, soft-voiced 
patriarch, remarkable for the gentleness of his man- 
ners, and the emotional tenderness of his tempera- 



THEIR FATHER AND MOTHER, 7 

ment. Tears rose to his eyes, smiles flitted across his 
face, precisely as they did in the face of Alice. He 
was the prototype of Alice. In her was reproduced 
not only his form and features, but his mental, moral, 
and emotional nature. To see father and daughter 
together, one would involuntarily exclaim, " How 
alike ! " They loved to be together. It was a delight 
to the father to take that long journey from the West- 
ern farm to the New York home. Here, for the first 
time, he found reproduced in reality many of the 
dreams of his youth. Nothing gave greater delight 
to his daughters than " to take father " to see pictures, 
to visit friends, and to join in evening receptions. In 
the latter he took especial pleasure, when he could sit 
in an arm-chair and survey the bright scene before 
him. He had poet eyes to see, and a poet's heart to 
feel the beauty of woman. Alice had a friend whom 
he never mentioned save as " your friend the pretty 
woman." He was informed, one evening, at a small 
party, that the beautiful young lady whom he was ad- 
miring, and who looked about twenty-five, was a happy 
matron and the mother of a grown-up son. His look 
of childlike amazement was irresistible. " Well, well," 
he exclaimed, " mothers of grown-up sons never looked 
as young as that in my day ! " 

The wife of this man, the mother of Alice and 
Phoebe Cary, was blue-eyed and beautiful. Her chil- 
dren lived to rise up and call her blessed. Alice said 
of her : " My mother was a woman of superior intel- 
lect and of good, well-ordered life. Jn my memory 
she stands apart from all others, wiser, purer, doing 
more, and living better than any other woman." And 
this is her portrait of her mother in her " Order for a 
Picture : " 



8 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

" A lady, the loveliest ever the sun 
Looked down upon, you must paint for me : 
O, if I only could make you see 

The clear blue eyes, the tender smile, 
The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace, 
The woman's soul, and the angel's face 

That are beaming on me all the while, 
I need not speak these foolish words : 

Yet one word tells you all I would say, 
She is my mother : you will agree 

That aid the rest may be thrown away." 

Phoebe said of her : " She was the wonder of my 
childhood. She is no less a wonder to me as I recall 
her now. How she did so much work, and yet did it 
well i how she reared carefully, and governed wisely, 
so large a family of children, and yet found time to 
develop by thought and reading a mind of unusual 
strength and clearness, is still a mystery to me. She 
was fond of history, politics, moral essays, biography, 
and works of religious controversy. Poetry she read, 
but cared little for fictitious literature. An exemplary 
housewife, a wise and kind mother, she left no duty 
unfulfilled, yet she found time, often at night, after 
every other member of the household. was asleep, by 
reading, to keep herself informed of all the issues of 
the day, political, social, and religious." When we 
remember that the woman who kept herself informed 
of all the issues of the day, political, social, and relig- 
ious, was the mother of nine children, a housewife, who 
performed the labor of her large household with her 
own hands \ that she lived in a rural neighborhood, 
wherein personal and family topics were the supreme 



THE CARY ANCESTRY. 9 

subjects of discussion, aloof from the larger interests 
and busy thoroughfares of men, we can form a juster 
estimate of the superiority of her natural powers, and 
the native breadth of her mind and heart. 

Such were the father and mother of Alice and 
Phoebe Cary. From their father they inherited the 
poetic temperament, the love of nature, and of dumb 
creatures, their loving and pitying hearts, which were 
so large that they enfolded all breathing and unbreath- 
ing things. From their mother they inherited their, 
interest in public affairs, their passion for justice, their 
devotion to truth and duty as they saw it, their clear 
perceptions, and sturdy common sense. 

Blended with their personal love for their father and 
mother, was an ingenuous pride and delight in their 
ancestry. They were proud of their descent. This 
was especially true of Phoebe. With all her personal 
modesty, which was very marked, pride of race was one 
of Phoebe Cary's distinguishing traits. She was proud 
of the Cary coat-of-arms, which hung framed in the 
little library in Twentieth Street ; prouder still to trace 
her name from the true and gentle father who gave it 
to her, to the John Cary who taught the first Latin 
school in Plymouth, and from him to the gallant Sir 
Robert Cary, who vanquished, a chevalier of Aragon, 
in the reign of Henry V., in Smithfield, London. A 
friend, in a former biographical sketch of the two sis- 
ters, referring to this knight, said that the genealogy 
which connected him with, the American Cary family 
" is at best unverified. " In private, Phoebe often re- 
ferred to this published doubt with considerable feeling. 

" Why do you care ? " asked a friend. " The con- 
queror of the Knight of Aragon cannot make you 
more or less." 



IO ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

" But I do care," she said. " He was my ancestor : 
it has been proved. He bore the same name as my own 
father. I don't like to have any doubt cast upon it. 
It is a great comfort to me to know that we sprung from 
a noble, not an ignoble race." This fact was so much 
to her in life, it seems but just that she should have the 
full benefit of it in death. Thus is given the entire 
story of the Knight of Aragon, as printed in Burke's 
" Heraldry," with the complete genealogy of the branch 
• of the American Cary family to which Alice and 
Phoebe belong : — 

John Cary, a lineal descendant of Sir Thomas Cary, 
(a cousin of Queen Elizabeth), came to the Plymouth 
Colony in 1630, was prominent and influential among 
the Pilgrim Fathers. He was thoroughly educated — 
taught the first Latin class, and held important offices 
in the town and church. He married Elizabeth, a 
daughter of Francis Godfrey, in 1644. He died in 
Bridgewater, in 168 1, aged 80 years. 

SECOND GENERATION. 

Joseph, the ninth child of John, born in Plymouth, 
in 1665, emigrated to Connecticut, and was one of the 
original proprietors of the town of Windham. At the 
organization of the first church in Windham, in the 
year 1700, he was chosen deacon. He was a useful 
and very prominent man. He died in 1722. 

THIRD GENERATION. 

John, the fourth child of Joseph, born in Windham, 
Connecticut, June 23, 1695, married* Hannah Thurs- 
ton, resided in Windham, was a man of wealth and 



THE CARY ANCESTRY. II 

influence in the church and in public affairs. He died 
in 1776, aged 81 years. 

FOURTH GENERATION. 

Samuel, the ninth child of John, born June 13, 1734, 
graduated at Yale College in the class of 1755, was a 
physician, eminent in his profession ; married Deliver- 
ance Grant, in Bolton, Connecticut, and emigrated to 
Lyme, New Hampshire, among the first colonists, 
where he died in 1784. 

FIFTH GENERATION. 

Christopher, the eldest child of Samuel, born Feb- 
ruary 25, 1763, joined the army at an early age, under 
Colonel Waite of New Hampshire ; was taken prisoner 
by the British, and suffered great hardships. He 
married Elsie Terrel, at Lyme, New Hampshire, in 
1784, removed with his family to Cincinnati, Ohio, in 
i8o2 > died at College Hill, Ohio, in 1837. 

SIXTH GENERATION. 

Robert, the second child of Christopher, born Jan- 
uary 24, 1787, emigrated with his father to the North- 
west Territory, in 1802, settled upon a farm near 
Mount Healthy, Hamilton County, Ohio, married 
Elizabeth Jessup in 1814, was a soldier in the war of 
1812, and was at Hull's surrender. He died in 1866. 
Their children were : — 

1. Rowena, born 1814, married Carnahan, died 1869. 

2. Susan, born 1816, married Alex. Swift, died 1852. 

3. Rhoda, born 1818, died 1833. 

4. Alice, born 1820, died 187 1. 

5. Asa, born 1822, living at Mount Pleasant, Ohio. 



12 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

6. Phoebe, born 1824, died 1871. 

7. Warren, born 1826, living near Harrison, Ohio. 

8. Lucy, born # i829, died 1833. 

. 9. Elmina, born 183 1, married Alex. Swift, and died 
1862. 

" In the beginning of the reign of Henry V., a 
certain knight-errant of Aragon, having passed through 
divers countries and performed many feats of arms, 
to his high commendation, arrived here in England, 
where he challenged any man of his rank and quality 
to make trial of his valor and skill in arms. This 
challenge Sir Robert Cary accepted, between whom a 
cruel encounter and a long and doubtful combat was 
waged in Smithfield, London. But at length this 
noble champion" vanquished the presumptuous Ara- 
gonois, for which King Henry V. restored unto him 
a good part of his father's lands, which, for his loyalty 
to Richard II., he had been deprived by Henry IV., 
and authorized him to bear the arms of the Knight 
of Aragon, which the noble posterity continue to 
wear unto this day ; for, according to the laws of her- 
aldry, whoever fairly in the field conquers his adver- 
sary, may justify the wearing of his arms." 

Phoebe had the Cary coat of arms engraved on a 
seal ring, which was taken from her finger after death. 

You see that it happened to the Cary family, as to 
many another of long descent, that it emerged from 
the vicissitudes of time and toil, poor, possessing no 
finer weapon to vanquish hostile fate than the in- 
trinsic temper of its inherited quality, the precious 
♦metal of honesty, industry, integrity, bravery, honor — 



THE CARY ANCESTRY. 1 3 

in fine, true manhood. The great-grandfather of Alice 
and Phoebe, Samuel Cary, was graduated from Yale. 
A physician by profession, in Lyme, New Hampshire, 
he seems to have been the last of the manifold " Cary 
boys" who possessed the advantages of a liberal 
education. His eldest son, Christopher, entered the 
army of the Revolution at the age of eighteen. When 
peace was won, the young man received not money, 
but a land grant, or warrant, in Hamilton County, 
Ohio, as his recompense. The necessity of poverty 
probably compelled Christopher to the lot of a tiller 
of the soil. 

And even Phoebe, if she thought of it, must have 
acknowledged that this grandsire of hers, who went 
into the army of freedom to fight the battles of his 
country at eighteen, who, when liberty was won, went 
to struggle with the earth, to wrest from the wilder- 
ness a home for himself and his children, was an an- 
cestor more worthy of her admiration and pride than 
even the doughty Sir Robert, who fought with and 
'overcame the Knight of Aragon. The editor of the 
" Central Christian Advocate," in writing of the death 
of Alice, says : — 

" We remember well her grandfather, and the house 
at the foot of the great hill, where his land grant was 
located. In early boyhood we often climbed the hills, 
and sometimes listened to the conversation of the 
somewhat rough and rugged soldier, whom we all 
called ' Uncle Christopher/ " 

Robert Cary came with his father, Christopher, from 
New Hampshire to the wilderness of Ohio in 1803, at 
the age of fifteen. Says his granddaughter, Ada Car- 
nahan: "They travelled in an emigrant wagon # to 



14 ALICE AND PBCEBE CARY. 

Pittsfield, and descending the river on a flat-boat, 
arrived at Fort Washington. This was a thriving set- 
tlement, though its people had hardly ceased to depend 
on its fort for protection from the savages, who still 
infested the surrounding forests and made occasional 
incursions into its immediate neighborhood." Here, 
for several years, the family remained, before making 
a purchase of lands some eight miles north of the set- 
tlement, on what is still known as the Hamilton Road. 

Robert Cary and Elizabeth Jessup were married 
January 13, 18 14, and began their married life upon a 
quarter section of the original Cary purchase, the same 
land which will be remembered for many generations 
as the Clovernook of Alice Cary's stones. Again 
says Ada Carnahan : " In the comparatively short 
time that had elapsed, there had been most marvelous 
changes in all this vicinity. The red- man had disap- 
peared. Log cabins and their surrounding clearings 
were scattered all over the region, while here and there 
might be seen a more pretentious frame dwelling. One 
of the latter Robert Cary reared for his home, which 
it continued to be for eighteen years, during which his 
nine children were born. The farm upon which Rob- 
ert and Elizabeth Cary began life was not, however, a 
gift, and it was the work of many laborious years to 
clear it from the incumbrance of debt — years which 
could, not but make their impression upon their rising 
family, and inculcate those lessons of perseverance, 
industry, and economy, which are the very foundations 
of success." .... 

" As is almost always the case in large families, 
the Cary children divided themselves into groups and 
couples, as age and disposition dictated. In this 



CHILDHOOD. 15 

grouping, Alice and Phoebe, afterwards to be brought 
into such close communion of life and thought, were 
separated. Alice's passionate devotion in life and 
death to the sister next older than herself is well 
known, while Phoebe, standing between her two broth- 
ers, turned toward the younger of these, whom she 

made her constant playfellow The children 

were much together in the open air, and were inti- 
mately acquainted with every nook and corner of their 
father's farm. They gathered wild flowers in May- 
time, and nuts in October, and learned to love the 
company of trees and blossoms, birds and insects, 
and became deeply imbued with the love of nature. 
They were sensitive and imaginative, and it may well 
be that they, at least two of them, saw more beauty, 
and heard more melody in nature than every eye is 
open to perceive. As they grew older, this kind of 
holiday life was interrupted by occasional attendance 
upon the district school, and by instruction in such 
household employments as were deemed indispensable 
— in knitting, sewing, spinning, cooking, churning, 
etc. Of all these, Phcebe only became proficient in 
the first two. In both these she took pleasure up to 
the time of her last illness, and in both she was un- 
usually dexterous and neat, as well as in penmanship, 
showing in these respects a marked contrast to Alice. 
The school-house in which they gained the rudiments 
of an English education was distant a mile and a 
quarter from their home. The plain, one story, brick 
building is still used for school purposes. . This dis- 
tance was always walked. Upon her last visit to this 
vicinity, in 1867, Phoebe Cary pointed out to me a 
goodly forest tree, growing at one side, but in the 



1 6 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

highway, and told how, when they were returning 
from school, one day, Alice found lying in the road a 
freshly cut switch, and picked it up, saying, ' Let us 
stick it in the ground and see if it will grow ; ' and im- 
mediately acting on her own suggestion, she stuck it 
in the ground ; and there, after more than thirty-five 
years, it stood, a graceful and fitting monument to the 
gracious and tender nature which bade it live. 

" In the autumn of 1832, by persevering industry 
and frugal living, the farm was at last paid for, and a 
new and more commodious dwelling erected for the 
reception of the family, grown too large to be longer 
sheltered by the old roof-tree. This new dwelling, 
which is still standing, is no more than the plainest of 
farm-houses, built at a time when the family were 
obliged to board the builders, and the bricks were 
burned on the spot; yet it represents a degree of 
comfort only attained after a long struggle." 

" It cost many years of toil and privation — the new 
house. We thought it the beginning of better times. 
Instead, all the sickness and death in the family dates 
from the time that it was finished. It seems as if 
nothing but trouble and sorrow have come since," said 
Alice Cary, late in the autumn of 1869, to a friend, 
as her starry eyes shone out from her pallid face, amid 
the delicate laces of her pillow, in the chamber on 
Twentieth Street. 

" Before that time I had two sources of unalloyed 
happiness : the companionship of my sister Rhoda, 
and the care of my little sister Lucy. I shall always 
think Rhoda was the most gifted of all our family. 
The stories that she used to tell me on our way home 
from school had in them the germ of the most won- 



A GHOST STORY. 17 

derful novels — of better novels than we read nowa- 
days. When we saw the house in sight, we would often 
sit down under a tree, that she might have more time 
to finish the story. My anxiety concerning the fate of 
the people in it was often so great I could not possibly 
wait to have it continued. At another time it would 
take her days together to tell one story. Rhoda was 
very handsome ; her great, dark eyes would shine with 
excitement as she went on. For myself, by the time 
she had finished, I was usually dissolved in tears over 
the tragic fate of her heroes and heroines. Lucy was 
golden-haired and blue-eyed, the only one who looked 
like our mother. I was not fourteen when she died 
— I'm almost fifty, now. It may seem strange when 
I tell you that I don't believe that there has been an 
hour of any day since her death in which I have not 
thought of her and mourned for her. Strange, isn't 
it, that the life and death of a little child not three 
years old could take such a hold on another life ? I 
have never lost the consciousness of the presence of 
that child. 

"That makes me think of our ghost story. Almost 
every family has a ghost story, you know ? Ours 
has more than one, but the one foreshadowed all the 
others." 

" Do tell it to me/' said the friend sitting by her 
bed. 

"Well, the new house was just finished, but we had 
not moved into it. There had been a violent shower ; 
father had come home from the field, and everybody 
had come in out of the rain. I think it was about 
four in the afternoon, when the storm ceased and the 
sun shone out. The new house stood on the edge of 
2 



1 8 . ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

a ravine, and the sun was shining full upon it, when 
some one in the family called out and asked how 
Rhoda and Lucy came to be over in the new house, 
and the door open. Upon this all the rest of the 
family rushed to the front door, and there, across the 
ravine, in the open door of the new house, stood 
Rhoda with Lucy in her arms. Some. one said, ' She 
must have come from the sugar camp, and has taken 
shelter there with Lucy from the rain/ Upon this 
another called out, l Rhoda ! ' but she did not answer. 
•While we were gazing and talking and calling, Rhoda 
herself came down-stairs, where she had left Lucy fast 
asleep, and stood with us while we all saw, in the full 
blaze of the sun, the woman with the child in her arms 
slowly sink, sink, sink into the ground, until she dis- 
appeared from sight. Then a great silence fell upon 
us all. In our hearts we all believed it to be a warn- 
ing of sorrow — of what, we knew not. When Rhoda 
and Lucy both died, then we knew. Rhoda died the 
next autumn, November n ; Lucy a month later, De- 
cember 10, 1833. Father went directly over to the 
house and out into the road, but no human being, and 
not even a track, could be seen. Lucy has been seen 
many times since by different members of the family, 
in the same house, always in a red frock, like one she 
was very fond of wearing ; the last time by my brother 
Warren's little boy, who had never heard the story. 
He came running in, saying that he had seen l a little 
girl up-stairs, in a red dress.' He is dead now, and 
such a bright boy. Since the apparition in the door, 
never for one year has our family been free from the 
shadow of death. Ever since, some one of us has 
been dying." .... 



STRUGGLES WITH POVERTY. 19 

" I don't like to think how much we are robbed of in 
this world by just the conditions of our life. How much 
better work I should have done, how much more suc- 
cess I might have won, if I had had a better opportunity 
in my youth. But for the first fourteen years of my life, 
it seemed as if there was actually nothing in existence 
but work. The whole family struggle was just for the 
right to live free from the curse of detit. My father 
worked early and late ; my mother's work was never 
done. The mother of nine children, with no other 
help than that of their little* hands, I shall always feel 
that she was taxed far beyond her strength, and died 
before her time. I have never felt myself to be the 
same that I was before Rhoda's death. Rhoda and I 
pined for beauty ; but there was no beauty about our 
homely house, but that which nature gave us. We 
hungered and thirsted for knowledge ; but there were 
not a dozen books on our family shelf, not a library 
within our reach. There w T as little time to study, and 
had there been more, there was no chance to learn but 
in the district school-house, down the road. I never 
went to any other — not .very much to that. It has 
been a long struggle. Now that I can afford to gather 
a few beautiful things about me, it is too late. My 
leisure I must spend here " (turning toward her pillow). 
" Do you know " (with a pathetic smile) " I seem to 
myself like a worn-out old ship, laid up from further 
use. I may be repaired a little; but I'll never be sea- 
worthy again." 

The friend, looking into her face, saw the dark eyes 
drowned in tears. 



20 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 



CHAPTER II. 

EARLY STRUGGLES AND SUCCESS. 

The deaths of Rhoda and Lucy Cary were followed 
by the decline and passing away of their mother, who 
died July 30, 1835. In 1837, Robert Cary married 
again. His second wife was a widow, suitable in years, 
k and childless. Had her temperament been different, 
her heart must have gone out in tenderness to the 
family of young, motherless girls toward whom she 
was now called to fill a mother's place. The limita- 
tions of her nature made this impossible. • Such a 
mental and spiritual organism as theirs she could not 
comprehend, and with their attempted pursuits she had 
no sympathy. All time spent in study she considered 
wasted. 

Alice, now seventeen, and Phoebe, thirteen, were 
beginning to write down in uncertain lines the spon- 
taneous songs which seemed to sing themselves into 
being in their hearts and brains. A hard, uncul- 
tured, utilitarian woman, to whom work for work's 
sake was the ultimatum of life, could not fail to 
bring unhappiness to two such spirits, nor fail to sow 
discord in a household whose daily toil from birth had 
been lightened and brightened by an inborn idealism, 
and the unconscious presence of the very spirit of song. 
Ada Carnahan says : " Alice kept busily at work dur- 



EARLY EDUCATION. 21 

ing the day, prosecuting her studies at night. This 
a fruitful source of dissension between herself 
and stepmother, who could not believe that burning 
candles for this purpose was either proper or profitable, 
that reading books was better than darning socks, or 
writing poems better than making bread. But the 
country girls, uncultured in mind and rustic in manners, 
not needing to be told the immense distance which 
separated them from the world of letters they longed 
to enter, would not be discouraged. If they must 
darn and bake, they would also study and write, and 
at last publish : if candles were denied them, a saucer 
of lard with a bit of rag for wick could and did serve 
instead, and so, for ten long years, they studied and 
wrote and published without pecuniary recompense ; 
often discouraged and despondent, yet never despair- 
ingly lonely and grown over-sensitive, prone to think 
themselves neglected and slighted, yet hugging their 
solitude in unconscious superiority ; looking out to the 
graveyard on the near hillside with a regret for the 
past, and over and beyond it into the unknown dis- 
tance with hope for the future." Phoebe, speaking of 
the Cary sisters as if merely acquaintances, says : 
" They saw but few books or newspapers. On a small 
shelf of the cottage lay all the literary treasures of 
the family. These consisted of a Bible, Hymn Book, 
the ' History of the Jews,' ' Lewis and Clark's Travels,' 
6 Pope's Essays,' and ' Charlotte Temple,' a romance 
founded on fact. There might have been one or two 
more, now forgotten, and there was, I know, a mutilated 
novel by an unknown hand, called the ' Black Penitents,' 
the mystery of whose fate (for the closing pages of 
the work were gone) was a life-long regret to Alice." 



2 2 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

Robert and Elizabeth Cary were early converts to 
Universalism, and the "Trumpet," says Phoebe, "read 
by them from the publication of its first numbers till 
the close of their lives, was for many years the only 
paper seen by Alice, and its Poet's Corner the food of 
her fancy, and source of her inspiration." Yet with 
such ill selected and scanty food for the mind, and 
early trained to be helpful in a household where great 
needs and small resources left little time for anything 
but the stern, practical part of life, these children began 
very early to see visions and to dream dreams. "At 
the age of fifteen Alice was left motherless, and, in one 
sense, companionless, her yet living sisters being too 
old or too young to fill the place left vacant in her 
life. The only sins of writing of which she seemed to 
have been guilty up to this time were occasional efforts 
to alter and improve the poetry in her school reader, 
and a few pages of original rhymes which broke the 
monotony of her copy-books. All ambition, and all 
love of the pursuits of life, seemed for a time to have 
died with her beloved sister. Her walks, which were 
now solitary, generally terminated af the little family 
burial-place, on a green hill that rose in sight of home." 
All these conditions and influences in her life must be 
considered in measuring her success, or in estimating 
the quality of her work. One of the severest criticisms 
passed on her early poems was that they were full 
of graves. Remembering the bereaved and lonely girl 
whose daily walk ended in the graveyard on the hill- 
side, where her mother and sisters slept, how could her 
early song escape the shadow of death and the vibra- 
tion of sorrow? With her, it was the utterance of 
actual loss, not the morbid sentimentalism of poetic 



F/KST VENTURES. 23 

youth. \ In after years, Phoebe often spoke of the new, 
keen sensation of delight which she felt when, for the 
first time, she saw her own verses in print. " O, if they 
could only look like that now," she said to me within 
a year of her death ; " if they only could look like 
that now, it would be better than money." She was 
but fourteen when, without consulting even Alice, she 
sent a poem in secret to a Boston newspaper, and knew 
nothing of its acceptance, till to her astonishment 
she saw it copied in a home (Cincinnati) paper. 
She laughed and cried over it. " I did not care any 
more if I were poor, or my clothes plain. Somebody 
cared enough for my verses to print them, and I was 
happy. I looked with compassion on my schoolmates. 
You may know more than I do, I thought, but you 
can't write verses that are printed in a newspaper ; but 
I kept my joy and triumph* to myself." (I 

Meanwhile Robert Cary built a new house on the 
farm, to which he removed with his second wife, leaving 
Alice and Phoebe, their two brothers, and young sister 
Elmina, to live together in the old home. By this time 
newspapers and magazines, with a few new books, in- 
cluding the standard English poets, were added to the 
cottage library, while several clergymen and other per- 
sons of culture coming into the rural neighborhood, 
brought new society and more congenial associations 
to the sisters. Alice had begun to publish, and with- 
out hope of present reward was sending her verses 
through the land astray, they chiefly finding shelter in 
the periodicals and journals of the Universalist Church, 
with which she was most familiar, and in the daily and 
weekly journals of Cincinnati. The Boston "Ladies' 
Repository," the " Ladies' Repository " of Cincinnati, 



24 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

and "Graham's Magazine," were among the leading 
magazines which accepted and published her earlier 
verses. Phoebe says : " Alice's first literary adventure 
appeared in the ' Sentinel ' (now ' Star of the West '), 
published in Cincinnati. It was entitled/ The Child 
of Sorrow/ and was written in her eighteenth year. 
The ' Star/ with the exception of an occasional con- 
tribution to some of the dailies of the same city., was 
for many years her only medium of publication. /After 
the establishing of the ' National Era ' at Washington 
in 1847, sne wrote poetry regularly for its columns, and 
here she first tried her hand at prose, in a series of 
stories under a fictitious name. From Dr. Bailey of 
the ' Era ' she received the first money ever earned 
by her pen — ten dollars sent as, a gratuity, when she 
had written for him some months. She afterwards 
made a regular engagement to furnish him with con- 
tributions to his paper for a small stipulated sum." 
Even now the real note of a natural singer will pene- 
trate through all the noise of our day, and arrest the 
step and fix the ear of many a pilgrim amid the multi- 
tude. This was far more strikingly the fact in 1850-51. 
Poets, so called, then were not so plenty as now ; the 
congregation of singers so much smaller, any new voice 
holding in its compass one sweet note was heard and 
recognized at once. There had come a lull in the 
national struggles. The tremendous events which 
have absorbed the emotion and consumed the energies 
of the nation for the last decade were only just begin- 
ning to show their first faint portents. Men of letters 
were at leisure, and ready to listen to any new voice in 
literature. Indeed, they were anxious and eager to see 
take form and substance in this country an American 



ALICE )' POBT&Y. 25 

literature which should he acknowledged and honored 
abroad. Jui the books of American authors 

which he has left behind, no one at that time could 
e been quite so much on the alert for new Ameri- 
nd poetei Dr. Rufus W. Griswold. 
He generously set amid his " American Female Writ- 
ers M names which perished like morning-glories, after 
St outburst of song. He could not fail, then, 
to hear with delight those sweet strains of untu- 
tored music breaking from that valley of the West, 
heard now across all the land. The ballads and lyrics 
written by that saucer of lard with its rag flame, in the 
hours when others slept, were bringing back at last 
true echoes and sympathetic responses from kindred 
souls, throbbing out in the great world of which as yet 
these young singers knew nothing. Alice's " Pictures 
of Memory " had already been pronounced by Edgar 
Allan Poe to be one of the most musically perfect 
lyrics in the English language. The names of Alice 
and Phoebe Cary in the corners of newspapers and 
magazines, with the songs which followed, had fixed 
the attention and won the affection of some of the best 
minds and hearts in the land. Men of letters, among 
them John G. W r hittier, had written the sisters words 
of appreciation and encouragement. In 1849, the ed- 
itor of the " Tribune," Horace Greeley, visited them in 
their own home, and thus speaks of the interview : " I 
found them, on my first visit to Cincinnati, early in 
the summer of 1849 ; and the afternoon spent in their 
tidy cottage on ' Walnut Hills/ seven miles out of the 
city, in the company of congenial spirits, since departed, 
is among the greenest oases in my recollection of 
scenes and events long past." 



26 • ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

In May, 1849, Phoebe writes : " Alice and I have 
been very busy collecting and revising all our published 
poems, to send to New York. Rev. R. W. Griswold, 
quite a noted author, is going to publish them for us ' 
this summer, and we are to receive for them a hundred 
dollars. I don't know as I feel better or worse, as I 
don't think it will do us much good, or any one else." 
This little volume, entitled " Poems of Alice and 
Phoebe Cary," published by Moss and Brother, of 
Philadelphia, was the first condensed result of their 
twelve years of study, privation, aspiration, labor, sor- 
row, and youth. 

To the year 1850, Alice and Phoebe had never met 
any of their Eastern friends save Mr. Greeley. But 
after the publication of their little book, they went 
forth together to the land of promise, and beheld face 
to face, for the first time, the sympathetic souls who 
had sent them so many words of encouragement and 
praise. They went first to New York, from thence to 
Boston, and from Boston these women minstrels took 
their way to Amesbury, and all unknown, save by 
name, knocked at the door of the poet Whittier. Mr. 
Whittier has commemorated that visit by his touching 
poem of " The Singer," published after the death of 
Alice. 

Years since (but names to me before), 
Two sisters sought at eve my doOr ; 
Two song-birds wandering from their nest, 
A gray old farm-house in the West. 

Timid and young, the elder had 
Even then a smile too sweetly sad ; 
The crown of pain that all must wear 
Too early pressed her midnight hair. 



" the singer: 1 27 

ng, 

Her modest lip -ng ; 

A memory haunted all h< 

rds. 

The broad horizons of the \\ 
Her speech dropped prairie dowers ; the gold 
ait her rolled. 

Fore-doomed to song she seemed to me ; 

I queried not with destiny : 

I knew the trial and the need, 

Yet all the more, I said, God speed ! 

What could I other than I did ? 
Could I a singing-bird forbid ? 
Deny the wind-stirred leaf ? Rebuke 
The music of the forest brook ? 

She went with morning from my door ; 
But left me richer than before : 
Thenceforth I knew her voice of cheer, 
The welcome of her partial ear. 

Years passed ; through all the land her name 
A pleasant household word became ; 
All felt behind the singer stood 
A sweet and gracious womanhood. 

Her life was earnest work, not play ; 
Her tired feet climbed a weary way ; 
And even through her lightest strain 
We heard an undertone of pain. 

Unseen of her, her fair fame grew, 
The good she did she rarely knew, 
Unguessed of her in life the love 
That rained its tears her grave above. 



28 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

The friendship thus sympathetically begun between 
these tender, upright souls never waned while human 
life endured. To their last hour, Alice and Phcebe 
cherished for this great poet and good man the affec- 
tion and devotion of sisters. Of this first visit Alice 
wrote : " I like him very much, and was sorry to say 
good-by." After an absence of three months the sis- 
ters returned to the West, which was nevermore to be 
their home. 

In November of the same year (1850), Alice Cary, 
broken in health, sad in spirit, with little money, 
but with a will which no difficulty could daunt, an 
energy and patience which no pain or sorrow could 
overcome, started alone to seek her fortune, and to 
make for herself a place and home in the city of New 
York. Referring to this the year before her death, she 
said : " Ignorance stood me in the stead of courage. 
Had I known the great world as I have learned it 
since, I should not have dared ; but I didn't. Thus I 
came." 

The intellectual life of neither man nor woman can 
be justly judged without a knowledge of the conditions 
which impelled that life and gave to it shape and sub- 
stance. Alice Cary felt within her soul the divine 
impulse of genius, but hers was essentially a feminine 
soul, shy, loving, full of longings for home, overbur- 
dened with tenderness, capable of an unselfish, life- 
long devotion to one. Whatever her mental or "spirit- 
ual gifts, no mere ambition could ever have borne such 
a woman out into the world to seek and to make her 
fortune alone. Had Alice Cary married the man whom 
she then loved, she would never have come to New York 
at all, to coin the rare gifts of her brain and soul into 



ALICE'S SOLITARY LOVE. 29 

money for shelter and bread. Business interests had 
brought into her western neighborhood a man at that 
time much her superior in years, culture, and fortune. 
Naturally he sought the society of a young, lovely 
woman so superior to her surroundings and associa- 
tions. To Alice he was the man of men. It is doubt- 
ful if the most richly endowed man of the world whom 
she met afterwards in her larger sphere, ever wore to 
her the splendor of manhood, which invested this king 
of her youth. Alice Cary loved this man, and in the 
profoundest sense she never loved another. A proud 
and prosperous family brought all their pride and 
power to bear on a son, to prevent his marrying a girl 
to them uneducated, rustic, and poor. " I waited for 
one who never came back," she said. " Yet I believed 
he would come, till 1 read in a paper his marriage to 
another. Ca?i you think what life would be — loving 
one, waiting for one who w r ould never come ! " 

He did come at last. His wife had died. Alice 
was dying. The gray-haired man sat down beside the 
gray-haired woman. Life had dealt prosperously with 
him, as is its wont with men. Suffering and death had 
taken all from her save the lustre of her wondrous 
eyes. From her wan and wasted face they shone 
upon him full of tenderness and youth. Thus they 
met with life behind them — they who parted plighted 
lovers when life was young. He was the man whom 
she forgave for her blighted and weary life, with a 
smile of parting as divine as ever lit the face of 
woman. 

Alice Cary's was no weak nature. All its fine fem- 
inine gold was set in a will of iron. All its deep 
wells of tenderness were walled and held in by jus- 



30 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

tice, common sense, and unyielding integrity. She 
outlived that sorrowful youth to speak of it with pity, 
to drop a silent tear upon its memory as if it were the 
youth of another person. She lived to become preem- 
inently one of the world's workers. She had many 
and flattering offers of marriage, but she never entered 
into a second engagement. With all her capacity for 
affection, hers was an eclectic and solitary soul. He" 
who by the very patent of his nature was more to her 
than any other being could be, passed out from her 
life, but no other one ever took his place. 

It was in this desolation of her youth that Alice Cary 
resolved to go to New York, and make a home and 
life-work for herself. Many sympathetic souls had 
sent back answering echoes to her songs. We may 
believe that to her lonely heart the voice of human 
praise was sweet. If it could not recall the first prom- 
ise of her morning, at least it foretold that hers would 
be a busy, workful, and successful day. It cannot be 
said that she found herself alone in New York, for, 
from the first, her genius and true womanliness gath- 
ered around her a small circle of devoted friends. 
Women loved her, 

" And men, who toiled in storm and sun, 
Found her their meet companion." 

In the spring of 185 1, she wrote to her sisters to 
join her, and in April, Phcebe and her lovely young 
sister, then scarcely twenty years of age, left Cincinnati 
and came to Alice. Of this departure of the three 
from the home nest, Phcebe says : " Without advice 
or counsel of any but themselves, they resolved to 
come to New York, and after the manner of children 



3 1 

in th lv their fortune. Many sail and 

trvin id come to the family, and home was 

not what it b ... They had comparative youth, 

though they were much older in years than in experi- 

and knowledge of the world ; they had pleasant 

fa home and name that might be earned by 

the next spring the bold venture 

" Living 1n a very economical and humble way, writ- 
ing for whatever papers would accept their contribu- 
tions, and taking any remuneration that was offered, 
however small, they did from the first somehow man- 
age to live without debt, and with little obligation." 
To appreciate more perfectly the industry and frugal- 
ity which enabled them to do this, we must' know how 
much smaller, at that time, was the reward for all lit- 
erary labor, than it is now. Speaking of their coming 
to make New York their home, in his sketch of the 
sisters in the " Eminent Women of the Age," Horace 
Greeley says : — 

" I do not know at whose suggestion they resolved 
to migfate to this city, and attempt to live here by lit- 
erary labor ; it surely was not mine. If my judgment 
ever invoked, I am sure I must have responded 
that the hazard seemed to me too great, the induce- 
ments inadequate. And, before you dissent from this 
opinion, be pleased to remember that we had then 
scarcely any periodical literature worthy of the name 
outside of the political and commercial journals. I 
doubt that so much money was paid, in the aggregate, 
for contributions to all the magazines and weeklies 
issued from this city, as were paid in 1870 by the 
' Ledger ' alone. Our magnificent system of dissem- 



32 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. . 

ination by means of railroad trains and news compa- 
nies was then in its infancy; when I started * The 
New Yorker/ fifteen years earlier, it had no existence. 
It impeaches neither the discrimination, the justice, 
nor the enterprise, of the publishers of 1850, to say 
that they hardly paid for contributions a tithe of the 
prices now freely accorded to favorite writers ; they 
paid what they could. I remember seeing Longfellow's 
grand ' Endymion ' received in manuscript at the office 
of a popular and successful weekly, which paid fifteen 
dollars for it ; a hundred such would now be quickly 
taken at one hundred and fifty dollars each, and the 
purchasers would look anxiously about them for more. 

" Alice and Phoebe came among us, as I have said, 
in 1850. • They hired two or three modest rooms, in 
an unfashionable neighborhood, and set to work reso- 
lutely to earn a living by the pen." 

The secret of the rare material success which at- 
tended them from the beginning is to be found in the 
fact that from the first they began to make a home : 
also in the fact that they possessed every attribute of 
character and habit necessary to the making of one. 
They had an unfeigned horror of " boarding." Any 
friend of theirs ever compelled to stay in a boarding 
house was sure of an extra portion of their com- 
miseration and sympathy. A home they must have, 
albeit it was up two flights of stairs. To the mainte- 
nance of this home they brought industry, frugality, and 
a hatred of debt. If they had money but to pay for a 
crust, then a crust must suffice. With their inflexible 
integrity they believed that they had no right to more, 
till they had money to pay for that more. Thus from 
the beginning to the end they always lived within their 



\nsiiu\ 33 

income. Th e or had anything better than 

could afford. With true feminine instinct, they 
le their little "flat" take on at once the cosiest 
look of home. A man-genius seeking the city, as they 
did, of c mid have taken refuge in a boarding- 

house attic, and "enjoyed himself" in writing 
and leaders amid dirt and forlornity. Not so these 
women-poets. I have heard Alice tell how she papered 
one room with her own hands, and Phoebe how she 
painted the doors, framed the pictures, and " brightened 
up " things generally. Thus from the first they had a 
home, and by the very magnetism that made it bright, 
cheery, in truth a home, they drew around them friends 
who were their friends no less till they breathed their 
last sigh. One of these was Mr. Greeley. He always 
cherished for these sisters three the respect and affec- 
tion which every true man instinctively feels for the 
true women who have their being within the circle of 
his life. In their friendship one religious faith, kin- 
dred pursuits, mutual friends, and long association 
strengthened and cemented the fraternal bond to the 
last. Mr. Greeley himself thus refers to their early 
tea-parties. 

" Being already an acquaintance, I called on the 
sisters soon after they had set up their household gods 
among us ; and met them at intervals thereafter at 
their home or at the houses of mutual friends. Their 
parlor was not so large as some others, but quite as 
neat and cheerful ; and the few literary persons, or 
artists, who occasionally met at their informal invita- 
tion, to discuss with them a cup of tea and the newest 
books, poems, and events, might have found many 
more pretentious, but few more enjoyable gatherings. 



34 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

I have a dim recollection that the first of these little 
tea-parties was held up two flights of stairs, in one of 
the less fashionable sections of the city ; but good 
things were said there that I recall with pleasure yet; 
while of some of the company, on whom I have not 
since set eyes, I cherish a pleasant and grateful re- 
membrance. As their circumstances gradually, though 
slowly improved, by dint of diligent industry and 
judicious economy, they occupied more eligible quar- 
ters ; and the modest dwelling they have for some 
years owned and improved, in the very heart of this 
emporium, has long been known to the literary guild, 
as combining one of the best private libraries with the 
sunniest drawing-room (even by gas-light) to be found 
between King's Bridge and the Battery." 

Thus began in 1850-51 the life and work of Alice 
and Phcebe Cary in New York. The next year saw 
the coming out of Alice's first series of u Clovernook 
Papers." They were full of the freshness and fragrance 
of her native fields ; full of simple, original, graphic 
pictures of the country life, and the men and women 
whom she knew best ; full of the exquisite touches of 
a spontaneous, child-like genius, and they were gath- 
ered up as eagerly by the public as the children gather 
wild flowers. Their very simplicity and freshness won 
all hearts. They sold largely in this country and in 
Great Britain. English critics bestowed on them the 
highest and most discriminating praise, as pure prod- 
ucts of American life and genius, while the press of 
this country universally acknowledged their delicious 
simplicity and originality. Alice published a second 
series in 1853, with unabited success, while in 1854, 
Ticknor and Fields published the " Clovernook Chil- 



ALICE CAR D POETRY. 

dren," which alar with 

had been with their elders. In i 
id Other Poems, by Alii pub- 

lished by Redfield. This volume called out s 

on the uniform sadness of i 
dally in "Putnam's Monthly," which 
Alice much pain. Nevertheless it was a s 
book, and was brought out a second time com pi 
with the addition of kk The Maiden of Tlascala," a 
narrative poem of seventy-two pages, by Ticknor and 
Fields, in 1855. Alice's first novel, " Hagar, a Story 
of To-Day,'' was written for and appeared in the 
4 * Cincinnati Commercial," and was afterwards brought 
out by Redfield in 1852. " Married, Not Mated," 
appeared in r856. " Pictures of Country Life, by 
Alice Car}-," were published by Derby and Jackson in 
1859. This book reproduced much of the freshness, 
the exquisite grace and naturalness, of her " Clovernook 
Papers." She was free on her native heath, when 
she painted rural scenery and rural life. These 
Papers were translated into French in Paris, and 
" The Literary Gazette" (London), which is not ac- 
customed to flatter American authors, said : " Every 
tale in this book might be selected as evidence of 
some new beauty or unhackneyed grace. There is 
nothing feeble, nothing vulgar, and, above all, nothing 
unnatural or melodramatic. To the analytical sub- 
tlety and marvelous naturalness of the French school- 
of romance she has added the purity and idealization 
of the home affections and home life belonging to the 
English, giving to both the American richness of color 
and vigor of outline, and her own individual power 
and loveliness." 



36 . ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

" Lyrics and Hymns," with portrait, beautifully 
bound and illustrated, which still remain the standard 
selection of her poems, were issued by Hurd and 
Houghton, in 1866. In 186-, "The Lover's Diary/' 
in exquisite form, and " Snow Berries, A Book for 
Young Folks," were bought by Ticknor and Fields. 
The same year a novel, " The Bishop's Son," which 
first appeared in the " Springfield (Mass.) Republi- 
can," was published by Carleton, New York. " The 
Born Thrall," a novel in which Alice hoped to embody 
her deepest thoughts and maturest convictions con- 
cerning the sorrows and wrongs of woman, was inter- 
rupted by her last sickness, while passing through the 
" Revolution," and never finished. She left, beside, a 
completed novel in manuscript, not yet published. 
Thus, beside writing constantly for " Harper's Maga- 
zine," the "Atlantic Monthly," "Riverside Magazine," 
"New York Ledger," "New York Weekly," "New 
York Independent," and chance newspapers and peri- 
odicals innumerable, which entreated her name for 
their pages, the active brain and soul of Alice Cary in 
twenty years produced eleven volumes, every word and 
thought of which was wrought from her own being, and 
every line of which was written by her own hand. In 
the same number of years, Phcebe, beside aiding in 
the editing of several books, the most important of 
which was " Hymns for All Christians," published by 
Hurd and Houghton in 1869, brought out "Poems and 
Parodies," published by Ticknor and Fields, 1854, and 
" Poems of Faith, Hope, and Love," issued by Hurd 
and Houghton in 1868. Beside, Alice and Phcebe 
left, at their death, poems enough uncollected to give 
each name two added volumes, one of each a book of 



MAINS. 37 

ChiKl in the actual intella 

product of the : tame number of 

very striking. It is the result, not so much of 
- of the compelling will, en< 
industry, and the patience of labor of the elder sister. 



38 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 



CHAPTER III. 

THEIR HOME. HABITS OF LIFE AND OF LABOR. THE 

SUMMER OF 1869. 

Before 1856, Alice and Phoebe had removed to the 
pretty house in Twentieth Street, which was destined 
to be their last earthly home. Within a short time 
Alice bought this house, and was its sole owner at the 
time of her death. An English writer has said : 
" Single women can do little to form a circle j they can 
but adorn one when found." This certainly was never 
true of the two single women whose earthly days we 
are tracing. From the beginning, the house in Twen- 
tieth Street became the centre of one of the choicest 
and most cosmopolitan circles in New York. The 
two sisters drew about them not only the best, but 
the most genial minds. True men and women 
equally found in each, companion, counselor, and 
friend. They met every true woman that came to 
them with sympathy and tenderness, feeling that they 
shared with her all the mutual toils and sorrows of 
womanhood. They met every true man, as brother, 
with an open, honest, believing gaze. Intensely in- 
terested in all great public questions, loving their 
country, devoted to it, devoted to everything good 
and true ; alive to everything of interest in politics, 
religion, literature, and society ; the one pensive and 



LITERARY HABITS. 39 

tender, the other witty and gay, men of refinement, 
culture, and heart found in them the most delightful 
companions. Beside (which was much), no man wel- 
come, was afraid to go to their house. Independent 
in their industry and resources, they asked few favors. 
They had no " designs," even the most harmless, on 
any living man. Men the most marriageable, or 
unmarriageable, could visit the Carys without fear or 
question. The atmosphere of the house was trans- 
parent as the sunshine. They loved women, they 
delighted in the society of agreeable men, and fear- 
lessly said so. The weekly refreshment of the house 
was hospitality, its daily habit, labor. I have never 
known any other woman so systematically and persist- 
ently industrious as Alice Cary. Hers was truly the 
genius of patience. No obstacle ever daunted it, no 
pain ever stilled it, no weariness ever overcame it, till 
the last weariness of death. As Phoebe said, " The 
pen literally fell from her hand at last," and only then, 
because in the valley of the shadow of death, which 
she had already entered, she could no longer see to 
trace the trembling, uncertain lines. But few men or 
women could look back upon fifty years of more per- 
sistent industry. I doubt if she e T er kept a diary, or 
wrote down a rule for her life. She did not need to 
do so; her life itself was the rule. There was a beau- 
tiful, yet touching uniformity in her days. Her pleas- 
ure was her labor. Of rest, recreation, amusement, 
as other women sought these, she knew almost nothing. 
Her rest and recreation were the intervals from pain, 
in which she could labor. It was not always the labor 
of writing. No, sometimes it was making a cap, or 
trimming a bonnet, or rummaging to the depths of 



40 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

feminine boxes ; yet no less it was work of some sort, 
never play. The only hour of rest any day brought, 
was the hour after dinner, the twilight hour, when one 
sister always came to the other's room, and with folded 
hands and low voices they talked over, almost always, 
the past, the friends loved, scattered, or gone before. 

The morning might be for mirth, but the evening 
belonged to memory. All Alice's personal surround- 
ings were dainty and womanly. It was no dreary 
den, in which she thought and wrought. It was a 
sunny room over the library, running the depth of the 
house, with windows at both ends. A carpet of woody 
tints, relieved, with scarlet flowers, covered the floor. 
On the pale walls, tinted a delicate green, hung pic- 
tures, all of which had to her some personal associ- 
ation. Over the mantel hung an oil painting, called 
" Early Sorrow," the picture of a poor, wind-beaten 
young girl, her yellow hair blown about her face, and 
the rain of sorrow in her eyes, painted by a struggling, 
unfortunate artist, whom Alice had done more to help 
and encourage, than all other persons in the world. 

Autumn leaves and sea-mosses imp/isoned in frames, 
with rich Bohemian vases, adorned the black' mar- 
ble mantel. Beside the back window, within the 
alcove for which it had been expressly made, stood the 
bed, her couch of suffering and musing, and on which 
she died. The bedstead was of rosewood traced with 
a band of coral, and set with arabesques of gilt ; its 
white coverlet and pillow-cases edged with delicate 
lace. Above it hung an exquisite engraving of Cupid, 
the gift of Mrs. Greeley, brought by her from Paris. 
At the foot of the bed hung a colored engraving of 
Rosa Bonheur's " Oxen," a farmer ploughing down the 



ALICE'S ROOM. 41 

furrows of a rolling field. "It rests me," she would 
say \ " I look at it, and live over my youth." Often in 
the afternoon, while taking her half hour's rest from 
work, as she leaned back among the pillows, the dark 
eyes were lifted and fixed upon this picture. In the 
winter, curtains of fawn-colored satin, edged and tas- 
sekd with soft red, shaded this alcove from the front 
room. The front windows were hung with the same. 
Between them, a mirror reached from floor to ceiling. 

Beside one of these windows stood Alice's desk. 
It was of rosewood, finely finished and commodious ; 
a bureau, desk, and book-case combined. The drawers 
below were the receptacle of her beloved India shawls, 
for which she had the same love that some women 
have for diamonds, and others for rare paintings. The 
drawer of her desk contained her manuscript papers ; the 
shelves above, the books that she was reading, and her 
books of reference \ while above all hung a favorite 
landscape in water-colors. On the other side of the 
mantel-piece stood corresponding bureau and shelves, 
filled with books. Here were copies of her own and 
Phoebe's works, which never appeared in the library 
or drawing-room below. Above these book-shelves, 
hung an autumn landscape. On. one side of the alcove 
there was an engraving of Correggio's " Christ \ " on the 
other, a copy of " The Huguenot Lovers." Beside the 
hall door, opposite her desk, there hung a portrait in 
oil of their father, by the hand which painted " Early 
Sorrow ; " on the other side of the door there was at 
one time a portrait of Phcebe. Easy chairs and foot- 
stools completed the furniture of this room, in which 
Alice Cary lived for fifteen years, the room in which 
she slowly and sadly relinquished life, and in which 
at last she died. 



42 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

At the opposite end of the hall was a room which cor- 
responded exactly with that of Alice, the room which 
had been Elmina's, in which she died, and which from 
her death was " Phoebe's room." Rich purple cur- 
tains used to hang from the alcove, shading the face 
of the lovely sufferer, and curtains of the same hue 
draped the windows. But Phoebe eschewed all 'dra- 
peries, and, summer or winter, nothing denser than 
white shades and the thinnest of lace curtains hung 
between her and the strongest sunshine. A bright red 
carpet, relieved by small medallions, covered the floor. 
Over the mantel-piece for a long time hung a superb 
copy of " The Huguenot Lovers," in a gilt frame. This 
was replaced at last by a copy of Turner, in oil, a 
resplendent Venetian scene. Beside the alcove hung 
the chromo of Whittier's " Barefoot Boy," which was 
a great favorite with Phoebe, while clusters of flowers 
in lithograph and water-colors, added to the bright 
cheerfulness of the room. Between the windows was 
a full length mirror; on one side of the room was 
Phoebe's desk, of the same form and wood, though of 
a smaller size than that of Alice. In its appointments 
it was a perfect model of neatness. It was always 
absolutely in order ; while, beside books, its shelves 
were ornamented with vases and other pretty trinkets. 
On the opposite side of the room stood a table, the 
receptacle of the latest newspapers, magazines, and 
novels, that, like the desk, was ever in order, and in 
addition to its freight of literature always made room 
for a work-basket well stocked with spools, scissors, 
and all the implements of an accomplished needle- 
woman. 

Both sisters always retained their country habit of 



DAILY HABITS. 43 

retiring and rising early ; they were rarely out of bed 
after ten at night, and more rarely in it after six of 
the morning. Till the summer of 1869, Alice always 
rose and went to market, Phoebe getting up as early 
and going to her sewing. From that time till her 
death, Phcebe did the marketing, and the purchases 
of the day were all made before breakfast. From that 
date, though not equal to the exertion of dressing and . 
going out, Alice arose no less early. 

She was often at her desk by five o'clock a. m., 
rarely later than six. Not a .week that she did not 
more than once tell us at the breakfast table that she 
had already written a poem that morning, sometimes^ 
more than one. Waking in the night, or before light, 
it was often her solace to weave her songs while others 
slept ; and the first thing she did on rising was to 
write them down from memory. During Elmina's 
decline it had been the custom of Alice and Phcebe 
to meet the first thing in the morning by her bed, to 
ask the dear one how she had rested, and to begin the 
communion of the day. From her death it was the habit 
of Phcebe to go directly to Alice as soon as she arose. 
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, each would tell 
the story of her night, though it was Alice who, being 
.very wakeful, really had a story of pains and thoughts 
and dreams to tell. I spent the summer, autumn, and 
a part of the winter of 1869 with them, and the memo- 
ries of those days are as unique as they are precious. 
"We three" met each morning at the breakfast table, 
in that pleasant, pictured dining-room, which so many 
remember. The same dainty china which made the 
Sunday evening teas so appetizing, made the break- 
fast table beautiful ; often with the addition of a vase 



44 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

full of fresh flowers, brought by Phoebe from market. 
If Alice was able to be there at all, she had been able 
before coming down to deck her abundant locks with 
a dainty morning cap, brightened with pink ribbons, 
and, in her white robe and breakfast shawl, with its 
brilliant border, never looked lovelier than when pour- 
ing coffee for two ardent adorers of her own sex. 
She was always her brightest at this time. She had 
already done work enough to promise well for the rest 
of her day. She was glad to see us, glad to be able 
to be there, ready to tell us each our fortune anew, 
casting our horoscope afresh in her teacup each morn- 
ing. Phoebe, in her street dress, just home from 
market, " had seen a sight/' and had something funny 
to tell. More, she had any amount of funny things to 
tell. The wittiest Phcebe Cary that ever made de- 
lightful an evening drawing-room was tame, compared 
with this Phcebe Cary of the breakfast table, with only 
two women to listen to her, and to laugh till they cried 
and had strength to laugh no longer, over her irresist- 
ible remarks, which she made with the assumed so- 
lemnity of an owl. Then came the morning journals 
and the mail ; and with discussing the state of the 
nation, growing "wrought up" over wrong and injus- 
tice everywhere, sharing the pleasant gossip of friends* 
the breakfast was often lengthened to a nearly two 
hours' sitting. Alice then went to the kitchen to 
order her household for the day, w r hen each of the 
three went to the silence and labor of her own room, 
seeing no more of each other, unless meeting over a 
chance cup of tea at lunch, till they reassembled at 
the dinner table, each to tell the pleasant part of 
the story of her day, and to repeat the delightful in- 



READING POEMS. 45 

tercourse of the morning. After dinner there was a 
general adjournment to Alice's or Phoebe's room, as it 
might happen. It was at this time, usually, that each 
sister read to the other the poem that she had written 
or corrected and copied that day. I can see Phoebe 
now, softly opening the door with her neat manuscript 
in her hand. Sitting down beside Alice's couch, in 
a shy, deprecating, modest fashion, most winsome to 
behold, she would read in low voice the poem. We 
never criticised it. The appealing tones of our reader 
made the very thoughts of criticism impossible. If it 
was funny, we laughed ; if it was sad, we cried, and 
our reader with us ; and in either case she was en- 
tirely satisfied with the appreciation of her audience. 
Then Alice would slowly go to her desk, draw forth 
tumbled sheets of manuscript, the opposite of Phoebe's 
in their chirography, and, settling in her easy-chair, 
begin in a low, crooning tone, one of those quaint, wild 
ballads of hers, which long before had made her pre- 
eminently the balladist of America. Many' of these 
I cannot see now without seeming to hear again the 
thrilling vibration of her voice, as we heard it when 
she read the song herself the very day that it flowed 
from heart and pen. Any time or anywhere, if I listen, 
I can hear her say, — 

" In the stormy waters of Gallaway 
My boat had been idle the livelong day, 
Tossing and tumbling to and fro, 
For the wind was high and the tide was low. 

" The tide was low and the wind was high, 
And we were heavy, my heart and I, 
For not a traveller, all the day, 
Had crossed the ferry of Gallaway." 



46 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

Phoebe's lays, when grave or sad, almost always 
savored of her native soil and home life ; but Alice, on 
the rhythm of her lyric, would bear us far out from the 
little room and the roaring streets, into the very land 
of romance, to the days of chivalry and " flowery 
tapestrie." The knight and lady, the crumbling castle, 
the tumbling and rushing sea, became for the moment 
as real to us as to her. 

The house below was as attractive as above. 

A small, richly stained window at the head of the 
stairs flooded the small hall with gorgeous light. This 
hall was frescoed in panels of oak ; floor and stairs 
covered with Brussels carpet of oak and scarlet tints. 
On its walls hung colored engravings of oxen, cows, 
and horses ploughing a field. 

To the right of the front entrance stood, wide open, 
the door of the spacious parlor, within whose walls for 
more than fifteen years gathered weekly so many gifted 
and congenial souls. This parlor was a large square 
room with five windows, two back and two front, with 
a deep bay-window between. These windows were 
hung with lace, delicately embroidered, from which 
were looped back curtains of pale green brocatelle 
lined with white silk. On either embrasure of the bay- 
window, in Gothic, gold illuminated frames, stood two 
altar pieces, about three feet high, from an old church 
in Milan, each bearing on a field of gold an angel in 
azure and rosy vestments, one playing on a dulcimer, 
the other holding a golden palm. In antique letters 
in black, beneath, was written on one tablet Psalm cl. 
3, and on the other, the succeeding verse of the same. 
A large oil-painting of sheep lying on a hillside hung 
at one time over the white marble mantel ; later, a fine 



THE PARLOR. 47 

Venetian scene from Turner, while on either side, 
very tall vases of ruby glass threw a wine-like hue on 
the silvery wall. On one side of the mantel there was 
a rosewood dtagkre, lined with mirrors, and decorated 
with vases and books. On the other side there was 
an exquisite copy in oil of Guido's " Aurora," brought 
by a friend from Italy. Opposite the bay-window a 
very broad mirror rose from floor to ceiling. 

Lovely Madonnas and other rare paintings covered 
the walls, some of which had been placed there by 
friends who had no proper room for them. The car- 
pet was of velvet in deep crimson and green ; the chairs 
and sofas, which were luxurious, were also cushioned 
in velvet of various blending hues. 

The most remarkable article in the room was the 
large centre table, made of many thousand mosaics of 
inlaid wood, each in its natural tint. Clusters of pan- 
sies, of the most perfect outline and hue, formed the 
border of the table, while the*extreme edge was inlaid 
in tints scarce wider than a thread. It was a work of 
endless patience, and of the finest art. It was made 
by a poor Hungarian artist, who used nearly a whole 
lifetime in this work of his hands. He brought it to 
this country hoping to realize for it a large sum, but 
was compelled by necessity, at last, to part with it for 
a small amount. It passed from various owners 
before it was bought by Alice Cary and placed in her 
parlor as its central shrine, around which gathered 
her choicest friends. Among the few books lying on 
a small stand within the bay-window was " Ballads of 
New England," written and presented by Whittier, 
with this inscription : — 



48 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 



TO ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY, 

Who from the farm-field singing came, 
The song whose echo now is fame, 
And to the great false city took 
The honest hearts of Clovernook, 
And made their home beside the sea 
The trysting-place of Liberty. 

From their old friend, 

John G. Whittier. 
Christmas ', 1869. 

Another was a dainty book in green and gold, 
entitled " The Golden Wedding," presented " To 
Phoebe Cary, with the kind regards of Joseph and 
Rebecca W. Taylor/' the parents of Bayard Taylor. 

Across the hall, opposite the parlor, was the library, 
which so many will remember as the very penetrale of 
this home, in "which iC the precious few " were so wont 
to gather for converse and choice communion. These 
words recall one wild night of rain and storm, which 
had hindered everybody else from coming but Mr. 
Greeley, when he said, in the hour before church, 
" Come, girls, let us read ' Morte d'Arthur ; ' " and, 
taking Tennyson from the book case, read from begin- 
ning to end aloud, "The Passing of Arthur." Mr. 
Greeley's tones, full of deep feeling, I shall hear while 
memory endures, as he read : — 

" Ah ! my Lord Arthur, whither shall I go ? 
Where shall I hide my forehead and my eyes ? 
For now I see the true old times are dead, 
When every morning brought a noble chance, 
And every chance brought out a noble knight. 



But now the whole Round Table is dissolved, 
Which was an image of the mighty world ; 



MR. GREELEY'S READING. 49 

And I, the last, go forth companionless, 

And the days darken round me, and the years, 

Among new men, strange faces, other minds." 

And slowly answered Arthur from the barge : 
"The old order changeth, yielding place to new, 
And God fulfills Himself in many ways, 
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world. 
Comfort thyself : what comfort is in me ? 
I have lived my life, and that which I have done 
May He within Himself make pure ! but thou, 
If thou shouldst never see my face again, 
Pray for my soul. More things are wrought by prayer 
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice 
Rise like a fountain for me night and day. 
For what are men better than sheep or goats 
That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer, 
Both for themselves and those who call them friend ? 
For so the whole round earth is every way 
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God. 
But now farewell. I am going a long way — 
With these thou seest — if indeed I go — 
(For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) 
To the island- valley of Avilion ; 
Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow, 
Nor ever wind blows loudly ; but it lies 
Deep-meadowed, happy, fair with orchard lawns 
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea, 
Where I will heal me of my grievous wound." 

Alice settled far back in her easy-chair, listening 
with eloquent eyes. Phoebe sat on a low hassock, 
playing with the long necklace on her neck, every 
bead of which marked a friend's remembrance. Dear 
sisters ! passed forever beyond the storm, we whom 
the storm even here has parted, may at least recall 
that hour of peace shared together ! 

This little library was furnished in oak, its walls 
4 



SO ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

frescoed in oak with panels of maroon shaded to crim- 
son. Two windows faced the street, the opposite end 
being nearly taken up by a large window of stained 
glass in which gold and sapphire lights commingled. 
Opposite the hall door was a black marble mantel 
surmounted by a mirror set in ebony and gold. On 
either side, covering the entire length of the room, were 
open oaken book-shelves, filled with over a thousand 
volumes, the larger proportion handsome library edi- 
tions of the standard books of the world. The windows 
were hung with satin curtains of an oaken tinge edged 
with maroon. Between them was a copy of the Gary 
coat-of-arms, of which Phoebe was so fond, richly 
framed. Below, a little gem in oil, of a Northampton 
(Massachusetts) scene, hung over a small table cov- 
ered with a crimson cloth, on which lay a very large 
Family Bible. To the left of the front windows hung 
an oil portrait of Madame Le Brun, the famous French 
artist, from an original painting by herself, now hang- 
ing in the Florentine Museum. On the other side of 
the door hung, in oval frames, the portraits of Alice and 
Phoebe, painted not long after their arrival in New 
York. The marble-topped table before the stained 
glass window was piled with costly books, chiefly 
souvenirs from friends. Two deep arm-chairs were 
near, one cushioned in green, the other in blue velvet ; 
the green, Alice's chair \ the blue, Phoebe's. The 
Brussels carpet was the exact counterpart of the walls, 
shaded in oak, maroon, and crimson. You have dis- 
covered before now, that the Cary home was never 
furnished by an upholsterer ? Its furniture, its trinkets 
and treasures, were the combined accumulation of 
twenty years. It was filled with keepsakes from friends, 



ALICE'S HO US; SI 

and - ht at 

I to do so, by 

unique furniture 01 
which she to me pleasure in 

juisite china, 
in which she took the I 
drank tea with her have not f! 

like cups out of which they drank it. She had a china 
et in her possession over a hundred years old. 
Many have the impression that Phoebe was the house- 
keeper of this home. Until the summer of 1869, lms 
in no sense true. Beyond the occasional sponta- 
neous preparation of a favorite dish, Phoebe had no 
care of the house. For nearly twenty years Alice 
arose, went to market, and laid out the entire house- 
hold plan of the day, before Phoebe appeared at break- 
fast. 

Alice Cary managed her house with quiet system 
and without ado. Her home was beautifully kept, the 
kitchen and garret as perfect in their appointments 
and as perfect in their order as her parlor. She was 
an indulgent mistress, respecting the rights of every 
person in her household as much as her own, and two 
sen-ants (sisters) who were with her when she died, 
one of whom closed Phoebe's eyes in death, lived with 
her many years. 

Phoebe did not "take to housework/' but was a 
very queen of the needle. Over work-basket and cut- 
ting-board she reigned supreme, and here held Alice 
at disadvantage. Alice could trim a bonnet or make 
a cap to perfection ; with these, the creative quality of 
her needle ended. A dress subdued her, and brought 
her a humble suppliant to the sewing-throne of Phoebe. 



52 ALICE AND PHOEBE CARY. 

There were at least two weeks in early spring, and two 
in the autumn, which were called " Miss Lyon's 
weeks," when Alice was literally under the paw of a 
lion. Miss Lyon was the dressmaker. She was quiet, 
kindly, artistic, and necessary ; therefore, in her king- 
dom, an unmitigated tyrant. Literature did not dare 
to peep in on Miss Lyon's weeks, or if it did, it was 
before she came, or while she was at breakfast. Books 
and papers she would not suffer in her sight after work 
began. She was always wanting " half a yard more " 
of something. She was always sending us out for 
" trimmings," and, as we rarely found the right ones, 
was continually sending us again. Poor Alice ! she 
went out six times one hot morning to find a stick of 
braid, which Miss Lyon insisted should have a pecul- 
iar kink. Once back, we had to sit down beside her, 
to "try on " and to assist. If we did not, " we could 
not have our new frocks, that was all," for Miss Lyon 
" could not possibly go through them alone, and she 
had not another day, not one, before winter." Thus, 
while purgatory reigned on Alice's side of the house, 
Phcebe in hers sat enthroned in serene satisfaction. 
She was no slave to Miss Lyon, not she. On the con- 
trary, while Miss Lyon snubbed us, she crossed the hall 
to consult Phcebe in a tone of deference, which (pro- 
fessionally) she never condescended to bestow on her 
victims. In Miss Lyon's days, nobody would have sus- 
pected that the house held a blue stocking. Dry goods, 
shreds, and tags prevailed above stairs, and Alice's 
room looked like a first-class dressmaker's shop, in 
which Miss Lyon ruled between two forlorn apprentices. 
It is not easy to see Alice Gary in a comical light, and 
yet Alice Cary in Phoebe's door, holding up an unfin- 



53 

. in which she had SCWed a .sleeve upside 
an inch shorter than the other, 
with her look of blended i nation and despair, 

mica! sight PI >nly refug 

such a plight, and to rip the sleeve, trim it, right it, 
and the work of a very few 

minutes for her deft fingf ques, dresses, cl 

and hats, all cut, and fitted, and made, came out from 
hands absolutely perfect, to the wonder and envy 
of the unfortunates across the hall. Miss Lyon, always 
ng her sceptre up-stairs, at the table was a sor- 
rowful, communicative woman, who poured the story 
of her troubles, her loneliness, and poor health into 
sympathizing ears. She tormented us, but we liked 
her, and were sorry for her. We comforted her when 
she was sick, and cried when she died, and remem- 
bered her with a sigh. It was a weary woman's poor 
little life after all ! She too had her dream of future, 
home, and rest ; but the money that she worked so 
hard to earn, and denied herself the necessities of life 
to save, she saved to will to a well-to-do relative who 
had neglected and forsaken her while she lived. By 
July, Miss Lyon's reign was over, but the kingdoms 
she had conquered were all visible, marked by the new 
dresses lying in a row on the bed in the little attic 
chamber. Alas ! on that same bed some of them lay 
after Alice's death, untouched. The poor hand that 
made them, and knotted their dainty ribbons, and the 
lovely form that was to have worn them, both alike 
locked from all device in the fastness of the grave ! 

The only shadow resting on the house was that of 
sickness and hovering death. Nothing could have 
been more absolutely harmonious than the daily abid- 



54 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

ing intercourse of these sisters. This was not because 
they always thought alike, nor because they never in 
any way crossed each other, nor was it based on their 
devoted affection and perfect faith in each other alone. 
Persons may believe in each other, and love each other 
dearly, and yet live in a constant state of friction. It 
was chiefly because each cherished a most conscien- 
tious consideration for the peculiarities of the other, 
and because in the minutest particular they treated 
each other with absolute politeness. There is such an 
expression used as "society manner." These sisters 
had no manner for society more charming in the slight- 
est particular, than they had for each other. No pun 
ever came into Phoebe's head too bright to be flashed 
over Alice, and Alice had no gentleness for strangers 
which she withheld from Phoebe. The perfect gentle- 
women which they were in the parlor, they were always, 
under every circumstance. There was not a servant 
in the house, who, in his or her place, was not treated 
with as absolute a politeness as a guest in the parlor. 
This spirit of perfect breeding penetrated every word 
and act of the household. What Alice and Phoebe 
Cary were in their drawing-room, they were always in 
the absolute privacy of their lives. Each obeyed one 
inflexible law. Whatever she felt or endured, because 
of it she was not to inflict any suffering upon her sister ; 
no, not even if that sister had inadvertently been the 
cause of it. If she was " out of sorts," she went 
into her own room, shut her door and "had it out" 
by herself. Whatever shape her Apollyon might take, 
she fought with him, and slew him, alone. When she 
appeared outside, it might strike one that a new line 
of pain had for the moment lit upon her face ; that was 



A COUNTRY REST. 55 

the only sign of the foe routed. The bright sally, the 
quiet smile, the perfection of gentle breeding were all 
there, undimmed and indestructible. 

The first of July, Phcebe went to Waldemere, 
Bridgeport, Conn., to visit the family of Mr. P. T. 
Barnum, and then to Cambridge, to see Mr. and Mrs. 
H. O. Houghton ;~Tft>s^ thence to visit the family of 
Rev. Dr. B. F. Tefft in Bangor, Maine. Early in June, 
Alice had been persuaded to visit a beloved niece in 
the mountain region of Pennsylvania. She remained 
a week, and on her return told how the sweet country 
air and the smell of the woods had brought back her 
girlhood. " But I could not stay," she said \ " I had 
so much to do." Nor w r ould she be induced to go 
again, though loving friends urged, indeed entreated 
her to leave her desk, and the heat and turmoil of the 
city. 

Physically and mentally she needed change and 
respite from the overstrain of too long continued toil. 
A summer in the country, at this crisis in her health, 
could not have failed to renovate, if not to restore life. 
But she clung to her home, her own room and sur- 
roundings, and to her work, and reluctantly Phoebe 
went forth to the kind friends awaiting her, alone. 
That was a mystical month that followed, that month 
of July. The very walls of the houses seemed changed 
into burning brass. The sun, uncooled by showers, 
rose and set, tracking all his course with a consuming 
fire. Everybody who could escape, had fled the city. 
During the entire month I do not remember that one 
person, not of the small household, crossed the thresh- 
old. We closed blinds and doors, and were alone. 
Apart at work all day, we spent our evenings together. 



$6 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

In those summer nights, with the blinds opened to let 
in a stray breeze from the bay, with no light but the 
fitful flicker of the lamp across the street, in the si- 
lence and dimness, feeling the whole world shut out 
and far away ; then it was that the flood-gates of mem- 
ory opened, and one received into her soul, with a depth 
and fullness and sacredness never to be expressed, that 
which was truly Alice Cary's life. 

In August, Alice wrote to me at Newport : " Phoebe 
is still away, and I alone in the house ; but busy as a 
bee from morning till night. I often hear it said that 
people, as they grow older, lose their interest in things 
around them ; but this is not true of me. I take more 
interest in life, in all that concerns it, and in human 
beings, every year I live. If I fail of bringing some- 
thing worthy to pass, I don't mean that it shall be for 
lack of^ energy or industry. I'm putting the house in 
order, and have such new and pleasant plans for the 
winter. Do hasten back, that I may tell you all about 
them." In two weeks I returned, and, going at once 
to her familiar room, she met me on the threshold 
without a word. As she kissed me ; her tears fell 
upon my face ; and, looking up, I saw the change in 
hers. The Indian summer of youth, which had made 
it so fair, four little weeks before, had now gone 
from it forever; the shadow of the grave reached 
it already. 

"Since I wrote you," she said, "my only sister, 
save Phcebe, has died ; and look at me ! " She moved, 
and I saw that the graceful, swaying movement, so 
especially hers, was gone — that she was hopelessly 
lame. 

Thus that first of September began the last, fierce 



SUFFERING. 57 

struggle between life and death, which was to continue 
for seventeen months. Only God and his ministering 
angels know with what pangs that soul and body 
parted. I cannot think of it without a shudder and a 
sigh — a shudder for the agony, a sigh for that patient 
and tender and loving heart, so full of life and yearn- 
ing amid the anguish of dissolving nature. At first 
it seemed impossible that she could remain lame. 
Each day wc said : " To morrow you must come down- 
stairs again." But, save with crutches, she never 
walked again. In the beginning it seemed impossible 
for her to adjust her mind or habits to this fact, or to 
realize that she was not able to join the familiar circle 
around the Sunday evening tea-table. Yet the more 
impossible it became for her to participate personally, 
the more eager she became for the happiness of others. 
She would have us dress in her room, that she might 
refresh her eyes with bright colors ; and leave the 
door of her room open, that she might hear the tones 
of dear, familiar voices coming up from below. When 
tea was cheering, and speech and laughter flowing 
freest, there was something inexpressibly touching in 
the thought of the woman who provided this cheer for 
so many, sitting by herself in a darkened room, sick and 
alone. Once, in going up to her, I found her weep- 
ing. " You should not have left the others," she said. 
"My only pleasure is in thinking that you are all 
happy down-stairs. But it makes me cry to think that 
I am done w T ith it all ; that in one sense I am as far 
away from you in health, as if I were already in eter- 
nity." 

In the early dawn of a wintry morning, I went in to 
her bedside to say good-by. The burning hands out- 



58 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. - 

stretched, the tearful, beseeching eyes, the low voice 
burdened with loving farewell, are among the most 
precious and pathetic of all the treasures which faith- 
ful memory bears on to her in the land where she 
now is. 



DAY EVENING RECEPTIONS. 59 



CHAPTER IV. 

THEIR SUNDAY EVENING RECEPTIONS. 

The most resplendent social assemblies which the 
world has ever seen have been those in which philoso- 
phy, politics, and literature mingled with fortune, 
rank, beauty, grace, and wit. Nor was this commin- 
gling of dazzling human forces identical only with the 
Parisian salon. " Blue-stocking " in our day is synony- 
mous only with a stiff, stilted, queer .literary woman of 
a dubious age. Yet the first blue-stocking, Elizabeth 
Montague, was a woman who dazzled with her wit, as 
well as by her beauty, and who blazed with diamonds 
at fourscore. A purely blue-stocking party, to-day, 
would doubtless give us sponge cake, weak tea, and 
the dreariest of driveling professional talk. Yet the 
first assemblies which tore the name of blue-stocking 
were made up of actors, divines, beaux, belles, the 
pious and the worldly, the learned and the fashionable, 
the titled and the lowly born. Here, in the drawing- 
room of Montague House, mingling gayly together, 
might have been seen volatile Mrs. Thrale, wise Han- 
nah More, and foolish Fanny Burney ; the Greek 
scholar, Elizabeth Carter, with Garrick, Johnson, Rey- 
nolds, Young, Beattie, Burke, Lord Karnes, Lord 
Chatham, and Horace Walpole, with many others as 
personally brilliant if less renowned. One never 



60 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

thinks of calling a man a blue-stocking now ; yet it 
was a man who first wore " cerulean hose " in a fash- 
ionable assembly — Dr. Stillingfleet, who was a sloven 
as well as a scholar. Admiral Boscawen, glancing at 
his gray-blue stockings, worn at one of Mrs. Mon- 
tague's assemblies, gave it the name of the Blue-stock- 
ing Assembly, to indicate that the full dress, still 
indispensable to evening parties, might be dispensed 
with, if a person so chose, at Mrs. Montague's. A 
Frenchman, catching at the phrase, exclaimed, "Ah! 
les bas bleus /" And the title has clung to the literary 
woman ever since. 

The nearest approach to the first ideal blue-stock- 
ing reception ever reached in this country was the 
Sunday evening receptions of Alice and Phoebe Cary. 
Here, for over fifteen years, in an unpretending home, 
gathered not only the most earnest, but many of the 
most brilliant Americans of our time. There are like 
assemblies still, wherein men and women rich in all fine 
gifts and graces meet and mingle ; yet I doubt if there 
be one so catholic, so finely comprehensive, as to make 
it the rallying spot, the outraying centre of the artistic 
and literary life of the metropolis. Its central magnet 
lost, such a circle, once broken and scattered in all its 
parts, cannot be easily regathered and bound. Society 
must wait till another soul, equally potent, sweet, un- 
selfish, sympathetic, and centripetal, shall draw together 
once more its scattered forces in one common bond. . 
For the relief of Puritan friends who are troubled that 
those receptions occurred on Sabbath evening, I must 
say that they never hindered anybody from going to 
church. Horace Greeley, who never missed a Sabbath 
evening in this house when in the city, used to drink 



MR. GREELEY AT THE CARYS\ 6l 

his two cups of sweetened milk and water, say his say, 
and then suddenly vanish, to go and speak at a tem- 
perance meeting, to listen to Dr. Chapin, or to write 
his Monday morning leader for the " Tribune." 
Sabbath evening was their reception evening because 
it was the only one which the sisters had invariably 
free from labor ; and, as a rule, this was equally true 
of their guests. While her health permitted, Alice at- 
tended - church regularly every Sunday morning, and 
till her last sickness Phoebe was a faithful church-goer; 
but Sabbath evening was their own and their friends'. 
In their receptions there was no formality, no rule of 
dress. You could come as simply or as finely ar- 
rayed as you chose. Your costly costume would not 
increase your welcome, nor your shabby attire place 
you at discount. Indeed, if anything about you ever 
so remotely suggested poverty or loneliness, it would, 
at the earliest possible moment, bring Alice to your 
side. Her dark, gentle, tender eyes would make you 
feel at home at once. You would forget your clothes 
and yourself altogether, in a quiet, impersonal, friendly 
flow of talk which would begin at once between you. 
If a stranger, she would be sure not to leave you till 
Phoebe came, or till she had introduced you to some 
pleasant person, and you would not find yourself again 
alone during the evening. This was the distinctive 
characteristic of these Sunday evenings, that they 
opened welcoming doors to all sympathetic souls, 
without the slightest reference to the state of their 
finances or mere worldly condition. 

" What queer people you do see at the Carys' ! It 
is as good as a show ! " exclaimed a merely fashion- 
able woman. 



62 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

" I have no desire to go to the Carys'/' said a super- 
cilious literary dame," while they admit such people." 

" Why, they are reputable, are they not ? " was the 
astonished reply. 

" For aught I know ; but they are so odd, and they 
have no position — absolutely none." 

" Then the more they must need friends, Alice and 
Phoebe think. They contradict Goldsmith's assertion : 
* If you want friends, be sure not to need them. 1 " 

Phoebe's attention was called one day to a young 
man, poor, little known, ungraceful in bearing, and 
stiff in manner, who had artistic tastes and a desire to 
know artistic people, and who sometimes came quietly 
into the little library, on Sunday evening, without 
any special invitation, but who no less was cordially 
received. 

" says she is astonished that you receive him," 

said a friend. " He is so pushing and presumptuous, 
and his family is very common." 

"You tell ," said Phoebe, with a flash in her 

black eyes, " that we like him very much ; that he is 
just as welcome here as she is, and we are always glad 
to see her" 

There are centres of reunion still in New York, 
where literary, artistic, and cultured people meet; 
but we doubt if there is another wherein the poor 
and unknown, of aspiring tastes and refined sensibil- 
ities, could be so certain of an entire, unconscious 
welcome, untinged by even the suggestion of conde- 
scension or of patronage ; where, in plain garb and with 
unformed manners, they could come and be at home. 
Yet the Sunday evening reception was by no means 
the rendezvous of the queer and ne'er-do-well alone. 



THEIR VISITORS. 63 

During the fifteen years or more in which it flourished, 
. at the little house in Twentieth Street, it numbered 
among its guests and habitues as many remarkable 
men and women as ever gathered around the abun- 
dant board at Streatham, or sat in the library of Straw- 
berry Hill. 

^There was Horace Greeley, who so rarely missed a 
Sabbath evening at this house — a man in mind greater 
than Johnson, and in manners not unlike him ; who will 
live in the future among the most famous of his con- 
temporaries, as the man who, perhaps, more than any 
other, left his own distinctive, individual mark upon the 
times in which he lived. There was Oliver Johnson, 
rarely absent from that cheery tea-table, the apostle of 
human freedom, who stood in the van of its feeble 
guard when it cost much to do that \ strong, earnest, 
brave, and true, a king of radicals, whose swiftest the- 
ories never outran his faith in God, his love for human 
nature, his self- abnegating devotion to his friends, even 
when his only reward was selfishness and unworthiness. 
There was Mary Ann Johnson, his wife, so recently 
translated, whose memory of simple, dignified, wise, 
and tender womanhood is a precious and imperishable 
legacy to all who ever knew and loved her. And Julia 
Deane, Alice Cary's beloved friend, golden-haired, 
matchless as a Grecian goddess. I see her now as I 
saw her first, in the radiance of her undimmed beauty, 
sitting by Whittier's side, great poet and gentle man, 
in his plain Friends' garb, yet worshipping, as man and 
poet must, the loveliness of woman ! What a troop of 
names, more or less famous, arise as I recall those who 
at different times have mingled in those receptions ! 
Bayard Taylor, with his gifted and lovely wife ; the two 



64 ALICE AND PHCEBE GARY. 

married poets, Richard and Elizabeth Stoddard \ Prof. 
R. W. Raymond, Robert Dale Owen, Justin McCarthy, 
Hon. Henry Wilson, Samuel Bowles, George Ripley, 
Edwin Whipple, Richard Kimball, Thomas B. Aldrich, 
Carpenter (the artist), Robert Chambers of Edinburgh, 
Robert Bonner of New York, a man as generous in 
nature and pure in character as he has been preem- 
inently successful in acquiring wealth and fame, and 
who for many years, till their death, was the faithful 
friend of Alice and Phcebe. Among clergymen there 
were Rev. Dr. Abel Stevens, Methodist ; Rev. Dr. 
Chapin, Universalist ; Rev. Dr. Field, Presbyterian ; 
Rev. Dr. Deems, Methodist. Whatever their theolo- 
gies, all agreed in their faith in womanhood, as they 
found it embodied in Alice and Phcebe Cary. Among 
women much beloved by the sisters, who always had 
the entree of their home, were Mary L. Booth, Mrs. 
Wright, Mrs. Mary E. Dodge, Mrs. Croly, Mrs. 
Victor, Mrs. Rayl, Mrs. Mary Stevens Robinson. I 
have not space for one tenth of the names I might 
recall — actors, artists, poets, clergymen, titled people 
from abroad, women of fashion, women of letters, 
women of home, the known and the unknown. In 
each type and class they found friends ; and what 
better proof could be given of the richness of their 
humanity, that, without being narrowed by any, their 
hearts were large enough for all ! 

Perhaps neither sister could have attracted into one 
common circle so many minds, various, if not conflict- 
ing in their separate sphere of thought and action. 
Each sister was the counterpart of the other. To the 
sympathy, appreciation, tact, gentleness, and tender- 
ness of Alice were added the wit and bonhomie and 



THEIR VISITORS, 65 

sparkling cheer of Phoebe. The combination was per- 
fect for social effect and success. 

Rev. Charles F. Deems, Phoebe's pastor at the time 
of her death, and the cherished and trusted friend of 
both sisters, at the request of its editor wrote for 
"Packard's Monthly," February, 1870, an article enti- 
tled " Alice and Phoebe Cary : Their Home and 
Friends," which contains so vivid a sketch of some of 
their Sunday evening visitors that I quote from it : — 

"If they could all be gathered into one room, it 
would really be a sight to see all the people who have 
been attracted by these charming women during the 
years they have occupied this cozy home. Let us 
fancy that they are so collected. 

" There is, facile princeps of their friends, Horace 
Greeley — not so very handsome, perhaps, but owing 
so much to his toilet ! He is sitting in a listening or 
abstracted attitude, with his great, full head bent, or 
smiling all over his great baby face as he hears or tells 
something good \ perhaps especially enjoying the 
famous Quaker sermon which Oliver Johnson, of the 
' Independent/ is telling with such friendly accentu- 
ation, and with such command over his strong features, 
while all the company are at the point of explosion. 
That round-headed Professor of Rhetoric in the cor- 
ner, who reads Shakespeare in a style that would make 
the immortal William thrill if he could only hear him, 
is Professor Raymond. That slightly built man with 
a heavy moustache is Lord Adare, son of a Scotch 
Earl ; and the bonny, bright-eyed woman by his side is 
his wife — immensely pleased with Phoebe's frequent 
and rapid sallies of wit. And there are Robert Dale 
Owen, author of ' Footfalls on the Boundary of Another 
5 



66 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

World/ and Edwin Whipple, the Boston essayist and 
lecturer, whose forehead doth so forcibly oppress all 
the rest of his face ; and there, Samuel Bowles, of the 
'Springfield Republican/ and author of ' Across the 
Continent ; ' and the nobly built and genial traveller, 
Col. Thomas W. Knox, of the i Sun/ who has charmed 
us so in print with his sketches of Russia and Siberia, 
and who can talk quite as well as he can write ; and 
there, Justin McCarthy; formerly of the London 
' Morning Star/ and author of ' My Enemy's Daugh- 
ter ; ' and that handsome old gentleman, with the 
smile of the morning in his face, so courtly that you 
feel he should be some king's prime minister, and so 
venerable that he would give dignity to an arch- 
bishop's crozier, is Ole Bull, whose cunning hands 
have wrung ravishing music from the strings of the 
violin ; and just beyond, burly ^and full of good nature, 
is Phineas T. Barnum, ' showman/ and more than 
that, with great brains, which would have made him 
notable in any department. If the public have had 
pleasure in seeing his shows, he has had pleasure in 
studying the public ; and: his knowledge of human 
nature makes him a most entertaining talker. If any 
have thought of him only as a ' humbugger/ let the 
profound regard he has for these sincere and honest 
ladies, whose guest he so often is, plead against all 
that he has confessed against himself in his auto- 
biography. He ' does good by stealth, and blushes to 
find it fame/ but tells all the bad about himself un- 
blu shingly. A whole group of editors might be fan- 
cied — only that they have enough of each other 
' down town/ and so in society seek some one else, 
and do not ' group : ' for there are Dr. Field, the 



THEIR VISITORS. 6j 

excellent editor of the ' Evangelist ; ' and Mr. El- 
liott and Mr. Perry, of the ' Home Journal • ' and 
Whitelaw Reid, of the ' Tribune j ' and Mr. R. W. 
Gilder, of the ' Hours at Home ; ' and last but not 
least, Mr. Robert Bonner, of the i Ledger, ' of whom, 
seeing that I have never had literary and financial 
dealings with him on my own account, I may say that 
he has made illustrious the proverb, ' There is that 
scattereth, and yet increasei!!.' The publishers are 
represented by Robert Chambers, of Edinburgh, who 
has given so much ' Information for the People ' that 
people need not be informed who he is \ and George 
W. Carleton, the prince of publishers, whose elegant 
new book house, on Broadway, has already become 
the resort of literary and tasteful people. 

"And then, what ladies have been in that house ! 
How many of the most refined and noble women, 
whose names are unknown to fame, but whose minds 
and manners have given to society its aroma and 
beauty ! How many whose names are known all over 
Christendom ! If that of Elizabeth Cady Stanton 
suggests to a stranger — as, until I knew her, it cer- 
tainly did to me — anything not beautifully feminine, 
how he will be disappointed when he sees her. She 
is quiet, self-poised, i lady-like ' — for she is a lady 
— plump as a partridge, of warm complexion, has a 
well formed head, adorned with white hair, put up un- 
stiffly in puffs, and she would anywhere be taken for 
the mother of a governor or president, if governors 
and presidents were always gentlemen. I have stud- 
ied Mrs. Stanton hours at a sitting, when she was 
presiding over a public meeting in the Cooper Union, 
v *en the brazen women who have brought such bad 



68 ALICE AND PHCEBE CAKY. 

fame to the Woman's Rights movement were trying to 
secure 'the floor/ and gaunt fanatics of my own sex 
were contending with them for that c privilege/ and 
the mob were hissing or shouting, and the tact with 
which Mrs. Stanton managed that whole assembly was 
a marvel.. Except Henry Clay, of Kentucky, and 
Edward Stanly, formerly of North Carolina and now 
of California, she is the best presiding officer I have 
ever seen. 

" And that nice little person with short curls, so ad- 
mirably dressed, and self-sufficient, and handsome, 
not beautiful ; her tout ensemble a combination of au- 
thor, artist, actor — strong as a young man and sensi- ' 
tive as a young woman — is Anna Dickinson. And 
there, with so thoughtful a face, sits Mary L. Booth, 
industrious and accurate translator of huge volumes of 
French history and science, and now editor of ' Har- 
per's Bazar.' Her conversation is an intellectual treat. 
And there is Madame Le Vert, of Mobile, who in 
English and American society has so long held the 
place of c the most charming woman,' without arous- 
ing the envy of any other woman, and who, therefore, 
must have an exceptional temperament ; a lady who 
never says a very wise, or witty, or weak, or foolish 
thing, but whom you cannot speak with ten minutes 
without — weakly and foolishly it may be, but delight- 
fully — feeling yourself to be both wise and witty. 
' It is not always May,' even with Madame Le Vert. 
She has had losses and disappointments, and physical 
pain, and is no longer young, but she does marvel- 
ously draw the. summer of her soul through the 
autumn months of her years. But space would fail if 
each lady were particularly described, from Kate 



CLERICAL GUESTS. 69 

Field, the brilliant journalist and lecturer, and ' Jen- 
nie June ' (Mrs. Croly of ' Demorest's Magazine'), 
and Mary E. Dodge, of ' Hearth and Home/ who 
wrote ' Hans Brinker's Silver Skates/ to the sallow, 
self-denying missionary sister from Cavalla, clad in 
the costume of ten years ago, now a stranger in her 
own land. 

" Of the spiritual teachers, all are welcome at any 
time, from the Roman Catholic, John Jerome Hughes, 
and the eloquent Universalist, Chapin, to the ad- 
jective-yet-to-be-discovered Frothingham. The house 
of the Cary sisters is a Pantheon, a Polytechnic In- 
stitute, a room of the Committee qu Reconstruction, 
a gathering place for the ecclesiastical and political 
Happy Family. Original abolitionists and ^-original 
secessionists meet pleasantly in a circle where every- 
body thinks, but nobody is tabooed for what he 
thinks. 

" A great city is generally a mass of cold, but there 
are always % warm places ' even in a huge metropolis ; 
and strangers are peculiarly endowed with the instinct 
for detecting them. It is genuine goodness that does 
the warming. And this house is never cold ! 

" Thus is shown that these sisters are authors of 
more than books. Their influence in their home is 
beautiful, and conservative, and preservative. 

"May they live forever ! " 



7© ALICE AND PHCEBE GARY. 



CHAPTER V. 

ALICE CARY. — THE WOMAN. 

Years ago, in an old academy in Massachusetts, its 
preceptor gave to a young girl a poem to learn for a 
Wednesday exercise. It began, — 

" Of all the beautiful pictures 

That hang on Memory's wall, 
Is one of a dim old forest, 
That seemeth best of all." 

After the girl had recited the poem to her teacher, he 
told her that Edgar Poe had said, and that he himself 
concurred in the opinion, that -in rhythm it was one of 
the most perfect lyrics in the English language. He 
then proceeded to tell the story of the one who wrote 
it — of her life in her Western home, of the fact that 
she and her sister Phoebe had come to New York 
to seek their fortune, and to make* a place for them- 
selves in literature. It fell like a tale of romance on 
the girl's heart ; and from that hour she saved every 
utterance that she could find of Alice Cary's, and spent 
much time thinking about her, till in a dim way she 
came to seem like a much-loved friend. 

In 1857 the school -girl, then a woman, whom actual 
life had already overtaken, sat for the first time in a 
New York drawing-room, and looked with attentive but 
by no means dazzled eyes upon a gathering assembly. 



ALICE CARY. 7 1 

It does not follow, because a person has done some- 
thing remarkable, that he is, therefore, remarkable or 
even pleasant to look upon. Thus it happened that 
the young woman had numerous disappointments that 
evening, as one by one names famous in literature and 
art were pronounced, and their owners for the first 
time took on the semblance of flesh and blood before 
her. Presently came into the room, and sat down 
beside her, a lady, whose eyes, in their first glance, 
and whose voice, in" its first low tone, won her heart. 
Soft, sad, tender eyes they were, and the face from 
which they shone was lovely. Its features were fine, 
its complexion a colorless olive, lit with the lustrous 
brown eyes, softened still more by masses of waving 
dark hair, then untouched of gray, and, save by its 
own wealth, wholly unadorned. Her dress was as 
harmonious as her face. It was of pale gray satin, 
trimmed with folds of ruby velvet ; a dress like herself 
and her life — soft and sad in the background, bor- 
dered with brightness. This was Alice Cary. Even 
then her face was a history, not a prophecy. Even 
then it bore the record of past suffering, and in the 
tender eyes there still lingered the shadow of many 
vanished dreams. Thus the story of the old academy 
was made real and doubly beautiful to the stranger. 
The Alice Cary whom she had imagined had never 
been quite so lovely as the Alice Cary whom she that 
moment saw. That evening began a friendship 
between two women on which, till its earthly close, no 
shadow ever fell. 

As I sit here thinking of her, I realize how futile 
will be any effort of mine to make a memorial worthy 
of my friend. The woman in herself so far transcended 



72 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

any work of art that she ever wrought, any song (sweet 
as her songs were) that she ever sung, that even to 
attempt to put into words what she was seems hope- 
less. Yet it is an act of justice, no less than of love, 
that one who knew her in the sanctuary of her life 
should, at least partly, lift the veil which ever hung 
between the lovely soul and the world ; that the 
women of this land may see more clearly the sister 
. whom they have lost, who, in what she was herself, was 
so much more than in what she in mortal weakness 
was able to do — at once an example and glory to 
American womanhood. It must ever remain a grief to 
those who knew her and loved her best, that such a soul 
as hers should have missed its highest earthly reward ; 
but, if she can still live on as an incentive and a friend 
to those who remain, she at least is comforted now for 
all she suffered and all she missed here. 

The life of one woman who has conquered her own 
spirit, who, alone and unassisted, through the mas- 
tery of her own will, has wrought out from the hardest 
and most adverse conditions a pure, sweet, and noble 
life, placed herself among the world's workers, made 
her heart and thought felt in ten thousand unknown 
•homes — the life of one such woman is worth more to 
all living women, proves more for the possibilities of 
womanhood, for its final and finest advancement, its 
, ultimate recognition and highest success, than ten 
■ thousand theories or eloquent orations on the theme. 
Such a woman was Alice Cary. Mentally and spirit- 
dually she was especially endowed with the rarest gifts ; 
but no less, the lowliest of all her sisters may take on 
new faith and courage from her life. It may not be 
for you to sing till the whole land listens, but it is in 



THE WOMAN AND THE POET. 73 

your power, in a narrower sphere, to emulate the traits 
which brought the best success to her in her wider life. 
Many personally impress us with the fact that they 
ght into the forms of art the very best in them- 
Whatever they may have embodied in form, 
color, or thought, we are sure that it is the most that 
they have to give, and in giving that, they are by so 
much themselves impoverished. In their own souls 
they hold nothing rarer in reserve. The opposite was 
true of Alice Cary. You could not know her without 
learning that the woman in herself was far greater and 
sweeter than anything that she had ever produced. 
You could not sit by her side, listening to the low, slow 
outflow of her thought, without longing that she might 
yet find the condition which would enable her to give 
it a fuller and finer expression than had ever yet 
been possible. You could not feel day by day the 
blended strength, generosity, chanty, and tenderness 
of the living woman, without longing that a soul so 
complete might yet make an impression on the nation 
to which it was born, that could never fade away. 
Her most powerful trait, the one which seemed the 
basis of her entire character, was her passion for justice, 
for in its intensity it rose to the height of a passion. 
Her utmost capacity for hate went out toward every 
form of oppression. If she ever seemed overwrought, 
it was for some wrong inflicted on somebody, very 
rarely on herself. She wanted everything, the mean- 
est little bug at her feet, to have its chance, all the 
chance of its little life. That this so seldom could be, 
in this distorted world, was the abiding grief of her 
life. Early she ceased to suffer chiefly for herself; 
( but to her latest breath she suffered for the sorrows of 



74 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

others! Phoebe truly said : " Constituted as she was, 
it was not possible for her to help taking upon herself 
not only all the sorrows of her friends, but in some 
sense the tribulation and anguish that cometh upon 
every son and daughter of Adam. She was even unto 
the end planning great projects for the benefit of suffer- 
ing humanity, and working with her might to be help- 
l ful to those near her ; and when it seemed impossible 
that one suffering herself such manifold afflictions could 
think even of the needs of others." 

It was this measureless capacity to know and feel 
everything that concerns human nature, this pity for 
all, this longing for justice and mercy to the lowest and 
the meanest thing that could breathe and suffer — this 
largeness lifting her above all littleness — this univer- 
sality of soul, which made her in herself great as she 
was tender. Such a soul could not fail to feel, with 
deepest intensity, every sorrow and wrong inflicted 
upon her own sex. She loved women with a fullness 
of sympathy and tenderness never surpassed. She felt 
pity for their infirmities, and pride in their successes, 
feeling each to be in part her own. Believing that in 
wifehood, motherhood, and home, woman found her 
surest and holiest estate, all the more for this belief, 
her whole being rebelled against the caste in sex, which 
would prescribe the development of any individual soul, 
which would lay a single obstacle in the way of a toiling 
and aspiring human being, which would degrade her 
place in the human race, because, with all her aspira- 
tion, toil, and suffering, she wore the form of woman. 
Every effort having for its object the help, advancement, 
and full enfranchisement of woman from every form of 
injustice, in Church, State, education, or at home, had 



MRS. CROLY'S LETTER. * 75 

her completest sympathy and cooperation. Yet she 
said : " I must work in my own way, and that is a very 
quiet one. My health, habits, and temperament make 
it impossible that I should mix in crowds, or act with 
great organizations. I must say my little say, and do 
my little do, at home ! " These words add interest to 
the fact that Alice Cary was the first President of the 
first Woman's Club (now called Sorosis) formed in 
New York. The entire history of her relation with it 
is given in a private letter from Mrs. Jenny C. Croly, 
written since the death of Alice and Phcebe. As a 
testimonial of affection to them from a woman whom 
both sisters honored and loved, and as the history of 
how Alice Cary became President of a Woman's Club, 
which no other person could write, I take the liberty 
of quoting from this letter. 

Mrs. Croly says : " Alice particularly I loved, and 
thank God for ever having known ; she was so large 
and all-embracing in her kindliness and charity, that 
her place must remain vacant ; few women exist who 
could fill it. 

" Much as those of us who knew the sisters thought 
we loved them, few realized the gap it would make in 
our lives when they were gone. Their loyalty, their 
truth, their steadfastness, their genial hospitality, their 
warmth of friendship, their devotion to each other, — 
the beautiful utterances of their quiet, patient, yet in 
some respects, suffering lives, which found their way 
to the world, all belonged to them, and seem almost 
to have died with them. 

" It breaks my heart to remember how hard Phcebe 
tried to be ' brave ' after Alice's death, as she thought 
her sister would wish to have her; how she opened 



76 . ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

the windows to let in the sunlight, filled her room 
with flowers, refused to put on mourning, because 
Alice had requested her not to do so, and tried to in- 
terest herself in general schemes and plans for the 
advancement of women. But it was ail of no use. 
She simply could not live after Alice was gone. 'I 
do not know what is the matter with me,' she said 
to me on one occasion; 'I have lain down, and it 
seems, because Alice is not there, there is no reason 
why I should get up. For thirty years I have gone 
straight to her bedside as soon as I arose in the morn- 
ing, and wherever she is, I am sure she wants me now.' 
Could one think of these words without tears ? 

" In addition to the love I felt for them, I am proud 
of these two women, as women whose isolated lives 
were so simple and so pure, who gave back tenderness 
and devotion and loving charity, for the slights which 
society deals even to gifted, if lonely w r omanhood. 
Some mistaken impressions have been obtained in 
regard to Alice Cary, in consequence of the sudden 
termination of her alliance with 'Sorosis.' For her 
connection with the society at all, I alone am respon- 
sible. Some sort of organization among women was 
my hobby, and I had discussed it with her often at her 
Sunday evening receptions. She had sympathized, 
but always refused to take any active part on account 
of her ill health. When the society was actually formed, 
therefore, I applied first to Mrs. Parton to become its 
President, a post which she at first accepted, and after- 
wards' refused for a personal reason. Desirous of 
having a literary club, with the name of a distinguished 
literary woman, I begged Alice Cary to accept the 
position. She found it difficult to refuse my urgent 



ALICE AT THE WOMAN'S CLUB. 77 

entreaties, but did so, until I rose in great agitation, 
saying, l Alice Cary, think what faith, reverence, and 
affection thousands of women have given to you, and 
you will not even give to them your name/ I left the 
house hastily, and went back to my office, concealing 
hot tears of grief and disappointment behind my veil. 
A moment after I arrived there, to my astonishment 
she came in, sank down in a chair, breathless with her 
haste, and said, 'If my name is worth anything to 
woman, I have come to tell you to take it.' For 
answer I knelt down at her feet, and kissed her hand 
over and over again. Dear Alice Cary ! only the argu- 
ment that she was withholding something she could ( 
give had any weight with her." 

Alice took her seat as President of the Woman's 
Club, but from ill health and an instinctive disinclina- 
tion personally to fill any place publicly, she very soon 
resigned. Nevertheless, though at times she differed 
from special methods adopted by its .members, the 
Woman's Club (Sorosis), in its original intent, and in 
its possibilities as a source of mutual culture and 
help to women, always had her sympathy to her 
dying day. Her address on taking the chair of the 
Woman's Club, unique and entirely characteristic, 
I give as the first and last speech ever made by Alice 
Cary on a public occasion. Yet this public occasion 
of hers was a most genial and gracious one. In the 
sumptuous parlor of Delmonico's, in an easy chair, 
sat Alice Cary, surrounded by a party of ladies, 
while she read to them in her low, forceful tones 
the words of her address. Not an ungraceful or 
unfeminine thing was this to do, even the most preju- 
diced must acknowledge. " I believe in it," she said 



78 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

afterwards, " especially for any one who works best in 
concert with others, and to whom the attrition and 
stimulus of contact with other minds is necessary. 
To many women such a weekly convocation will be of 
the highest advantage, but so far as I personally am 
concerned, I enjoy better sitting up-stairs, chatting 
with a friend, while I trim a cap for Aunt Lamson." 
But here is the speech : — 

. Ladies, — As it will not be expected of me to make 
speeches very often, hereafter, I think I may presume 
on your indulgence, if I take advantage of this one 
opportunity. Permit me, then, in the first place, to 
thank you for the honor you have done me in assign- 
ing to me the President's chair. Why I should have 
been chosen, when there are so many among you 
greatly more competent to fill the position, I am at a 
loss to understand ; unless, indeed, it be owing to the 
fact that I am to most of you a stranger, and your 
imaginations have clothed me w 7 ith qualities not my 
due. This you would soon discover for yourselves ; 
I mention it only to bespeak your forbearance, though 
in this regard, I ventured almost to anticipate your 
lenity, inasmuch as you all know how untrained to 
business habits, how ignorant of rules, and how unused 
to executive management most women are. 

If I take my seat, therefore, without confidence, it is 
not without the hope of attaining, through your gener- 
ous kindness and encouragement, to better things. 
" A Woman's Club ! Who ever heard of the like ! 
What do women want of a Club ? Have you any aims 
or objects ? " These are questions which have been 
propounded to me day after day, since this project 



HER ADDRESS. 79 

was set afoot — by gentlemen, of course. And I have 
answered, that, in our humble way, we were striving to 
imitate their example. You have your exclusive clubs, 
I have said, and why should not we have ours ? What 
is so promotive of your interests cannot be detrimental 
to us i and that you find these reunions helpful to 
yourselves, and beneficial to society, we cannot doubt. 

You, gentlemen, profess to be our representatives, to 
represent us better than we could possibly represent 
ourselves ; therefore, we argue, it cannot be that you are 
attracted by grand rooms, fine furniture, luxurious din- 
ners and suppers, expensive wines and cigars, the 
bandying of poor jests, or the excitement of the gam- 
ing table. Such dishonoring suspicions as these are 
not to be entertained for a moment. 

Of our own knowledge, I have said, we are not able 
to determine what special agencies you employ for your 
advantage and ours, in your deliberative assemblies, 
for it has not been thought best for our interests that 
we should even sit at your tables, much less to share 
your councils ; and doubtless, therefore, in our blind- 
ness and ignorance, we have made some pitiful mis- 
takes. 

In the first place, we have " tipped the tea-pot." 
This is a hard saying, the head and front of the 
charges brought against us, and we cannot but 
acknowledge its justice and its force ; we are, in fact, 
weighed down with shame and humiliation, and 
impelled, while we are about it, to make full and free 
confession of all our wild and guilty fantasies. We 
have, then, to begin at the beginning, proposed the 
inculcation of deeper and broader ideas among women, 
proposed to teach them to think for themselves, and 



80 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

get their opinions at first hand, not so much because 
it is their right, as because it is their duty. We have 
also proposed to open out new avenues of employment 
to women, to make them less dependent and less bur- 
densome, to lift them out of unwomanly self-distrust 
and disqualifying diffidence, into womanly self-respect 
and self-knowledge ; to teach each one to make all 
work honorable by doing the share that falls to her, or 
that she may work out to herself agreeably to her own 
special aptitude, cheerfully and faithfully, not going 
down to it, but bringing it up to her. We have pro- 
posed to enter our protest against all idle gossip, 
against all demoralizing and wicked waste of time ; 
also against the follies and tyrannies of fashion, against 
all external impositions and disabilities ; in short, 
against each and every thing that opposes the full 
development and use of the faculties conferred upon 
us by our Creator. 

We have proposed to lessen the antagonisms exist- 
ing at present between men and women, by the use of 
every rightful means in our power ; by standing upon 
our divine warranty, and saying and doing what we are 
able to say and to do, without asking leave, and with- 
out suffering hindrance : not for the exclusive good 
of our own sex, for we hold that there is no exclusive, 
and no separate good ; what injures my brother injures 
me, and what injures me injures him, if he could but 
be made to know it; it injures him, whether or not he 
is made to know it. Such, I have said, are some of 
our objects and aims. We do not pretend, as yet, to 
have carefully digested plans and clearly defined 
courses. We are as children feeling our way in the 
dark, for it must be remembered that it is not yet half 



HER ADDRESS. 8 1 

a century since the free schools, even in the most 
enlightened portions of our country, were first opened 
to girls. How, then, should you expect of us the full- 
ness of wisdom which you for whole centuries have 
been gathering from schools, colleges, and the exclu- 
sive knowledge and management of affairs ! 

We admit our short-comings, but we do feel, gentle- 
men, that in spite of them, an honest, earnest, and 
unostentatious effort toward broader culture and nobler 
life is entitled to a heartier and more sympathetic rec- 
ognition than we have as yet received from you any- 
where ; even our representatives here at home, the 
leaders of the New York press, have failed in that 
magnanimity which we have been accustomed to 
attribute to them. 

If we could have foreseen the sneers and sarcasms 
with which we have been met, they of themselves would 
have constituted all-sufficient reasons for the establish- 
ment of this Woman's Club ; as it is, they have estab- 
lished a strong impulse towards its continuance and 
final perpetuity. But, ladies, these sneers and sarcasms 
are, after all, but so many acknowledgements of our 
power, and should and will stimulate us to braver 
assertion, to more persistent effort toward thorough 
and harmonious organization ; and concert and har- 
mony are all that we need to make this enterprise, 
ultimately, a great power for good. Indeed, with such 
women as have already enrolled their names on our 
list, I, for my part, cannot believe failure possible. 

Some of us cannot hope to see great results, for our 

feet are already on the downhill side of life ; the 

shadows are lengthening behind us and gathering 

before us, and ere long they will meet and close, and 

6 



82 



ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 



the places that have known us, know us no more. But 
if, when our poor work is done, any of those who come 
after us shall find in it some hint of usefulness toward 
nobler lives, and better and more enduring work, we, 
for ourselves, rest content. 



The love, sympathy, and pity which . Alice felt for the 
whole human race, she lavished with concentrated 
power on those near to her, the members of her own 
family, and all who had been drawn into the inner cir- 
cle of her personal life. She had not a relative who 
did not share her solicitude and care. Of her young 
nieces, the daughters of Rowena and Susan Cary, she 
was especially fond. The house on Twentieth Street 
was often graced and brightened by their presence, 
and one, "little Alice," grew up almost as an own 
daughter in her home, giving in return, to both her 
aunts to their latest hour, a filial devotion and tender- 
ness which the most loving daughter never surpassed. 

No child ever called her mother, yet to the end of 
life the heart of motherhood beat strong within her 
breast. Her love for children never grew faint. She 
was especially fond of little girls, and was wont to send 
for her little friends to come and spend a day with her. 
This was a high privilege, but any little girl that came 
was at once put at her ease, and felt perfectly at home. 
She took the individuality of each child into her heart, 
and reproduced it in her intercourse with it, and in her 
songs and stories. 

Her little girl visitors were sometimes silent ones. 
Going into her room one day, there was a row of pho- 
tographs, all little girls, arranged before her on her 
desk. 



ALICE'S LOVE OF CHILDREN. 83 

" Whose little girls ? " was the eager question. 

"Mine!" was the answer, breaking into a laugh. 
11 They are all Alice Carys ; take your choice. The 
only trouble they make me is, I can't possibly get time 
to write to them all, though I do try to, to the babies' 
mothers." All had been sent by strangers, fathers 
and mothers, photographs of the children named 
" Alice Cary." 

It is this real love for children, as children, which 
has given to both Alice and Phoebe Cary's books for 
little folks, such genuine and abiding popularity. 

No more touching proof could be given of Alice 
Cary's passionate sympathy with child nature, than her 
never-waning love for her own little sister Lucy. 
Though but three years old when she passed away, 
the impress of her child-soul was as vivid and powerful 
in her sister's heart after the lapse of thirty changeful 
years, as on the day that she died. It was more than 
sister mourning for sister, it was the woman yearning 
for the child whose vacant place in her life no other 
child had ever filled. The following lines, more than 
Wordsworthian in their bare simplicity, are an unfeigned 
utterance of her deepest heart. 

MY LITTLE ONE. 

At busy morn — at quiet noon — 

At evening sad and still, 
As wayward as the lawless mist 

That wanders where it will, 

She comes — my little one. 

I cannot have a dream so wrought 
Of nothings, nor so wild 



*4 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

With fantasies, but she is there, 
My heavenly-human child — 
My glad, gay little one* 

She never spake a single word 

Of wisdom, I agree ; 
I loved her not for what she was, 

But what she was to me — 

My precious little one. 

You might not call her beautiful, 
Nor haply was she so ; 

I loved her for the loveliness 
That I alone could know — 
My sweet-souled little one. 

I say I loved, but that is wrong ; 

As if the love could change 
Because my clove hath got her wings, 

And taken wider range ! 

Forgive, my little one. 

I still can see her shining curls 

All tremulously fair, 
Like fifty yellow butterflies 

A-fluttering in the air : 

My angel little one. 

I see her tender mouth, her eyes, 
Her garment softly bright, 

Like some fair cloud about the morn 
With roses all a-light : 
My deathless little one. 



f 



TEMPERAMENT. 85 

She had, in full, the keen sensitiveness of the poetic 
temperament. A harsh tone, even, would bring tears 
into her eyes ; a cold look would haunt her for days. 
It was an absolute grief to her to differ in opinion 
from any one she loved, although with her intensity of 
conviction this was sometimes inevitable. It pained 
her if two friends rose to any heat of temper in 
argument. If this ever occurred in her own parlor, 
though it rarely did, she would refer to it with a pained 
regret for weeks afterwards. This' fine sensitiveness 
of temperament was manifested in her extreme per- 
sonal modesty, which, to the end of her life, impelled 
her to shrink from all personal publicity, and to avoid 
everything which could attract attention to herself. 
She felt strong in rectitude, in her sense of justice, in 
her will to do for herself and others ; but, in compari- 
son with her friends, always plain and poor and lowly 
in person, attainment, and performance. Her standard 
of excellence, both in character and in work, was too 
high to admit of self-satisfaction. Her ideals in all 
things were absolutely perfect. She took no pride in 
them. She only sighed that with all her striving she 
could not reach them. 

No better proof could be given of the lack of self- 
consciousness in both sisters^ than the absence of all 
personal diaries, letters, and allusions to themselves 
among their effects. Amid the mass of their papers 
which remain, not a written line has either sister left 
referring personally to herself. They held the hum- 
blest opinion of their own epistolary powers, probably 
iiever wrote a letter in their lives for the mere sake of 
writing it, while they periodically sent requests to their 
friends to burn all letters from them in their posses- 



86 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

sion. Thus, amid their large circle of friends, very 
few letters remain, and nearly all of these are of too 
personal a character to admit of extracts. Alice never 
wrote a letter save on business, or to a person whom 
she loved. These letters were written in snatches of 
time between her tasks at early morning, or in the 
evening. She had no leisure to discuss art, or new 
books, seldom current events. The letter was always 
a direct message from her heart to her friend. In 
nothing, save in her self-denial for their sakes, did she 
manifest her brooding tenderness and care for those 
she loved, more than in her personal letters. 

The following extracts from private letters to one 
person, give an example of the letter-writing style 
which she held in such low esteem, and show what 
were the direct utterances of Alice Cary's heart in 
private to a friend. As the expression of herself in a 
form of which so little remains, they are full of in- 
terest. 

The first is dated September 3, 1866: — 

" I have not forgotten you, though you might think 
so. The truth is, in the first place, my letters are very 
poor affairs, and in the next, I know it. So you see I 
do not like to essay my poor powers in that direction, 
unless for a special reason, and such an one is my love 
for you. I think of you daily, indeed hourly, and wish 
you were only back among us. Can't you come foi 
a little while this winter? .... Go on ! We need 
all the strong words for the right that can be uttered 
We never needed them more, it seems to me. I arr 
afraid you are lonesome. I know how lonesome ] 
used to be in the country and alone. Alone, I mean 



ALICE'S LETTERS. 87 

so far as the society to which one belongs is con- 
cerned. For we all need something outside of our- 
selves and our immediate family. I don't care how 
much they may be to us, we require it both for mind 
and body. 

" I am here in my own room, just where you left me. 
How I wish you could come in. Wouldn't we talk ? 
I see all our old friends, but I do so wish for you. 

" I am very busy, never so busy in my life, but 
whether to good purpose or not, I cannot say. Did 
you read my story in the July and August numbers of 
the * Atlantic/ ' The Great Doctor ' ? 

" My. poems are expected out this fall, but not in a 
shape to please me ; the cuts are dreadfully done ; they 
look like frights. So things go, nothing quite as we 
would have it in this world ; let us hope we are nearing 
a better country. I could tell you a thousand things, 
but how can I write them ? 

" You have seen that poor Mrs. has passed from 

among us ? Her poor little struggle of a life is ended. 
I trust she has found one more satisfactory. My 
struggle still goes on. I am writing stories and 
verses — I can't say poems. 

"Write me, my dear, just from your heart." 

The next letter bears the date of September 17, 
1866: — 

" My dear, I've taken time by the forelock, as they 
say. I am up before the sun. 

" We had an interesting company last evening, among 
them Mr. Greeley, Mr. Beecher, and Robert Dale 
Owen. I thought of you,, and wished you here. I am 



88 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

glad you are at work again ; you must work, you have 
every encouragement. A word about my story. I 
had no design to write a word against the Methodists. 
I believe them to be just as good as any other people. 
But I had to put my characters in some Church, and 
as I lived among Methodists in my youth, I know 
much about their ways. But I have a good Method- 
ist preacher to set against my poor one, as will appear 
in due time. I would not do so foolish or mean a 
thing as to attempt to write down, or to write up, any 
denomination. There is good in all ; but human 
nature is human nature everywhere. 

" Thank you for your kind offer about my poems. I 
shall certainly remember your goodness. I do want 
the book to get before the public, and not be left to 
die in its cradle. I can say this much for it, It is mine. 
It is what I have thought, what I have seen, lived, and 
felt myself, not through books, or through other per- 
sons. I have taken the wild woods, corn fields, school- 
houses, rustic boys and girls, whatever I know best that 
has helped to make me; and however poor, there is the 
result. 

" I must see you somehow this winter, and your dear 
friend Mrs. , whom I love without having seen. 

" There is breakfast ! God bless you, and for a little 
while, good-by." 

Another letter is dated October 21, 1866 : — 

. ..." I am afraid you are sick or very sad, or I am 
sure I should have heard from you. I think of you so 
much, and always with tearful tenderness, for our souls 
are kindred. I am more than half sick. My cough. 



ALICE'S LETTERS. 89 

since the weather has changed, is very troublesome, so 
that I cannot sleep nights, which is dreadful, you know. 

" Won't you write and tell me all about yourself ? 
Somehow I feel worried about you, as if there were 
shadows all around you. 

"The house was full of pleasant company last night, 
but I was .too sick to share it. 

"I have managed with Carleton about my books. 
He has been very generous to me. I .like him, and 
you will. I am busy trying to do much more than I 
ought, but I seem to be driven by a demon to that end, 
and to what purpose ! Who cares for my poor little 
work, when it is all done ! What doth it profit under 
the sun ! I am sad to-day, very sad, and I ought to go 
to you only with sunshine. I have just finished a long, 
lonely ballad. I wish I could read it to you. More 
than that, I wish I could walk with you in the sunshine, 
out among the falling leaves, and say just what comes 
into my heart to say. But you are there, and I am 
here, c and the harbor bar keeps nearing.' " 

The following is from a letter written a year later, 
January, 1867 : — 

" Here am I again, in my corner, thinking of you 
and of many things of which we did not talk much. I 
felt a little hurt, at first, that I did not see you more, 
but I do not now. I know that it was just as you say. 
Never mind, I half think I will come again, I did 

enjoy the week in so much. I want to begin 

just where I left off. Dear Mrs. , she did so 

much for our comfort and pleasure. How I hope to 
do something for her sometime. And Mr. too, 



90 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

how I like him. It always did me good to see his 
bright face come in ; his very voice gave me confidence 
and — what word shall I use ? I don't know, I only 
know it always helped me to see him. 

" I've been working on a little book of poems, or a 
proposed book, rather, all day at my desk. It is now 
nearly night, and I am tired, but I got on pretty well ; 
that's some comfort. 

" I have not been well since my return, and the 
immense appetite I had in , I left here." 

The following bears a still later date : — 

. . . . " Thank you most kindly for your letter. If 
I had only received it earlier, I might have gone with 

my friends to , but they had already left, and 

anyway it would not have been easy to leave, for the 
house is full of visitors. I would like to be with you 
these times, but you can't imagine how busy I am, 
and have to be, to keep things going. I have been 
pretty well all winter, or I don't know how I should 
have got along. I have done a great deal of work, 
such as it is. Tell me what you propose to do, and 
all about yourself. First of all, I hope you are well ; 
that is the great thing. We have had very pleasant 
times this winter ; I have so much wished you here to 
help us. I have seen a good deal of Miss Booth for 
the last few months, and like her much ; have seen Ole 
Bull at home and elsewhere, and like him, as Anna 
Dickinson would say, ' excessively ! ' I have seen 
much also of the McCarthys of London. You know 
and like them both ; so do I. I do believe I have writ- 
ten my whole letter about myself. Well, pay me back 



ALICE'S LETTERS. 9 1 

in my own coin ; that is all I want. Give me some 
of those thoughts which go through your mind and 
heart, when you sit alone with your cheek in your 
hand. 

" Mind, I don't mean to say that you have not done 
anything well. By no means. But remember, your best 
work you yet must do." 

Another letter is dated November 24, 1868 : — 

" Your kind letter came duly. How I thank you for 
all your affectionate thoughts of me ! I have been 
thinking and thinking I would write, but it's the old 
story, I can't write anything worth the reading. If we 
could only see each other ! But written words are so 
poor and empty ! at any rate mine seem so, and I have 
not the gift to make them otherwise. 

" You have been sick and sad. I am so sorry for 
both, if that could help you. I am not well, either. 
My dear sick sister has been with me for two months 

with L . ' Little Alice ' is here now. I have had 

transient visitors all the time, — two calls for charity 
since I began this letter. So, my dear, you can see 
how some of my time, and much of my heart goes. 
You can imagine I have written very little, and as for 
reading, my mind is as blank as an idol's. 

"I hope to come to this winter, and that there 

we may see one another : but can't you somehow come 
to me, — so that we might steal an hour now and 
then ? I think it would do you good, I am sure it 
would me. I think of you oftener than you would 
believe. I have not so many friends that I cannot 
keep them all in my heart all the time. Have you 



92 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

made your new dress ? What are you doing ? and 
hoping to do ? Do write and tell me, if you can afford 
to get in return for good letters such chaff as I send. 

" It seems to me, if I only had your years, I would 
hope everything ; but think where I am ! So near the 
night, where no man can work, nor woman either. 

" Lastly, my dear, let me admonish you to stand more 
strongly by your own nature. God gave it to you. For 
that reason alone you should think well of it, and 
make the most of it. I say this because I think that 
your tender conscience is a little morbid, as well as 
tender. You hardly think that you have a right to 
God's best gifts, to the enjoyment of the free air and 
sunshine. . Your little innocent delights you constantly 
buy at a great cost. When you have given the loaf, 
you hardly think you have a right to the crust. One 
part of your nature is all the time set against the 
other, and you take the self-sacrificing side. I know 
through what straits you are dragged. You could 
not be selfish if you would, and I would not have you 
so, if I could. But I do think that you should compel 
yourself to live a higher, more expansive, and express- 
ive life. You are entitled to it. "There is a cloud all 
the time between you and the sun, and even the soul- 
less plants cannot live in the shade. I did not intend 
to write all this ; somehow, it- seemed to write itself. 
If I have said more than I ought, I pray you pardon 
me. 

"The day is lovely. I wish we were in the woods 
together, hearing the wind in the dead leaves, and 
getting from the quiet heart of our mother earth 
some of her tranquil rest. Good-by, my dear. May 
the Lord send his angels to abide with you." 



SPIRITUALISM. 93 

Many have inquired concerning her belief in " Spir- 
itualism." She was a spiritualist in the highest mean- 
ing of the much-abused term, as every spiritually 
minded person must be in some sense, and would be 
if no such thing as professional Spiritualism had ever 
existed. No one can believe in the New Testament, 
in God himself, and not be in this sense a spiritualist. 
One cannot have faith in another and better world, 
and not feel often that its border lies very near to 
this; so near, indeed, that our lost ones who have 
gone thither may come back to us, unseen, unheard, 
to walk as " ministering angels " by our sides. This 
is the spiritualism of Jesus and his disciples, and of 
holy men and women in all ages. 

All Alice Cary's spiritual faith is uttered in these 
lines : — 

" Laugh, you who never had 
Your dead come back ; but do not take from me 
The harmless comfort of my foolish dream : 

That these our mortal eyes, 
Which outwardly reflect the earth and skies, 

Do introvert upon eternity ; 
And that 'the shapes you deem 
Imaginations just as clearly fall, 
Each from its own divine original, 
And through some subtle element of light, 

Upon the inward spiritual eye, 
As do the things which round about them lie, 
Gross and material, on the external sight." 

She hated slavery in every form ; she was capable 
of a burning indignation against every type of wrong ; 
yet in her judgment of individuals she was full of 



94 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

charity and sympathy. I once expressed myself bit- 
terly toward a person who had spoken of Alice most 
unkindly and falsely. "You would not feel so, my 
dear/' she said, " if you knew how unhappy she is. 
When I think how very unhappy she must be herself r 9 
to be willing to injure one who never harmed her, I 
can only pity her." 

This intense tenderness, this yearning over every- 
thing human, with a pity and love inexpressible, made 
the very impulse and essence of her being. Surely, in 
this was she Christlike. Our Saviour wept over Jeru- 
salem. How many tears did she, his disciple, shed for 
sorrowing humanity, for suffering womanhood. Nor 
were tears all she gave. The deepest longing of her 
life was to see human nature lifted from sin to holiness, 
from misery to happiness ; every thought that she 
uttered, every deed she did, she prayed might help 
toward this end. To help somebody, no matter how 
lowly, to comfort the afflicted, to lift up the fallen, to 
share every blessing of her life with others, to live 
(even under the stress of pain and struggle) a life 
pure, large, in itself an inspiration — this, and more, was 
Alice Cary. 

Filled with the spirit, and fulfilling the law of the 
Master in her daily life, is it not intolerant, little, and 
even mean, now she has passed away forever, to cast 
on the abstract creed of such a woman the shadow 
of question, much less of reproach ? 

Why should her " Dying Hymn " be less the hymn of 
a dying saint, if she did believe that the mercy of her 
Heavenly Father, and the atonement of Jesus Christ, 
would, in the fullness of eternity, redeem from sin, and 
gather into everlasting peace, the whole family of man ? 



HER CREED. 95 

Justice tempered by love, the supreme attribute of her 
own nature, ran into her individual conception of God, 
and of his dealings with the human race, i/ Grieving 
over the fact that ten thousands of her fellow creatures 
are cursed in their very birth, born into the world with 
the physical and spiritual taint of depraved generations 
entailed upon them, with neither the power nor oppor- 
tunity, from the cradle to the grave, to break the chains 
of poverty and vice and rise to purity : she believed 
no less that the opportunity would come to every 
human being, that everything that God had made 
would have its chance ; if not in this existence, then in 
another. ^Without this faith, at times human life would 
have been to her intolerable. It was her soul's con- 
solation to say : — 

• 

" Nay, but 'tis not the end : 
God were not God, if such a thing could be ; 
If not in time, then in eternity, 
There must be room for penitence to mend 
Life's broken chance, else noise of wars 
Would unmake heaven." 

Phoebe, in settling the question of her religious faith, 
said : — 

"Though singularly liberal and unsectarian in her 
views, she always preserved a strong attachment to the 
church of her parents, and, in the main, accepted its 
doctrines. Caring little for creeds and minor points, 
she most firmly believed in human brotherhood as 
taught by Jesus ; and in a God whose loving kindness 
is so deep and so unchangeable, that there can never 
come a time to even the vilest sinner, in all the ages of 
eternity, when if he arise and go to Him, his Fathei 



96 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

will not see him afar off, and have compassion upon 
him. In this faith, which she has so often sung, she 
lived and wrought and hoped ; and in this faith, 
which grew stronger, deeper, and more assured with 
years of sorrow and trial and sickness, she passed 
from death unto life." 

The friends who shared so long the hospitality of 
her home, as they turn their eyes toward the closed 
doors of that home, finally bereft, well as they knew 
her and truly as they loved her, cannot dream of half 
the plans for their happiness and comfort that went out 
when that faithful heart ceased to beat. Nor was it of 
her friends only whom she thought. Long after suffer- 
ing had separated her forever from the active world, she 
took just as keen an interest in its great affairs as if 
still participating in them. Even when the shadows 
of eternity were stealing over her, nothing that con- 
cerns this mortal life seemed to her paltry or unim- 
portant. She wanted all her friends to come into her 
room and tell her everything about the life from which 
she was shut out. She took the deepest interest in 
everything human, from the grandest affair of state to 
" poor old Mrs. Brown's last cap-," which she persisted 
in making when so feeble that she could scarcely draw 
her needle through its lace. Yet this interest in human 
affairs did not shut from her gaze the things " unseen 
and eternal." She said to me one morning, after a 
night of suffering, " While you are all asleep, I lie here 
and think on the deep things of eternity, of the 
unknown life. I find I must leave it still with God, 
and trust Him ! " 

One of the last things she said to me was, " If you 
could see all the flowers brought into this room by 



LAST WORDS. 97 

friends piled up, it seems to me they would reach to 
heaven. I am certainly going toward it on flowery 
beds, if not beds of ease." 

And her last words to me, with a radiant smile, 
were, " When you come back, you will find me so much 
better I shall come and stay with you a week. So we 
won't say good-by." Thus in one sense we never 
parted. Yet my only regret in thinking of her, is that 
life with its relentless obligations withheld me from her 
in her very last days. It is one of those unavailing 
regrets on which death has set his seal, and to which 
time can bring no reparation. 

For her sake let me say what, as a woman, she could 
be, and was, to another. She found me with habits of 
thought and of action unformed, and with nearly all the 
life of womanhood before me. She taught me self help, 
courage, and faith. She showed me how I might help 
myself and help others. Wherever I went, I carried 
with me her love as a treasure and a staff. How many 
times I leaned upon it and grew strong. It never fell 
from me. It never failed me. No matter how life 
might serve me, I believed without a doubt that her 
friendship would never fail me ; and it never did. If 
I faltered, she would believe in me no less. If I fell, 
her hand would be the first outstretched to lift me up. 
All the world might forsake me ; yet would not she. 
I might become an outcast ; yet no less would I find in 
her a shelter and a friend. Yet, saying this, I have 
not said, and have no power to say, what as a soul I 
owe to her. 

These autumn days sharpen the keen sense of irrep- 
arable loss. These are the days that she loved ; in 
•whose balsamic airs she basked, and renewed her life 
7 



98 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY*. 

with ever fresh delight. These are the days in which 
she garnished her house for new reunions, in which she 
drew nearer to nature, nearer to her friends, nearer to 
her God. October is here, serene as of old ; but she 
is not. Her house is inhabited by strangers. Her 
song is hushed. Her true heart is still. But life — 
the vast life whose mystery enthralled her — that 
remorselessly goes on. I laid a flower on her grave 
yesterday ; so to-day I offer this poor memorial to her 
name, because I loved her. 



ALICE CARY THE WRITER. 99 



CHAPTER VI. 

ALICE CARY. — THE WRITER. 

As an artist in literature Alice Cary suffered, as so 
many women in this generation do, for lack of thorough 
mental discipline and those reserved stores of knowl- 
edge which must be gathered and garnered in youth. 
When the burden and the heat of the day came, when 
she needed them most, she ha4 neither time nor 
strength to acquire them. Her early youth was spent 
chiefly in household drudgery. Her only chance for 
study was in dear snatches at books between her tasks, 
and by the kitchen fire through the long winter even- 
ings. Referring to this period of her life, she said : — 

" In my memory there are many long, dark years of 
labor at variance with my inclinations, of bereavement, 
of constant struggle, and of hope deferred." 

Thus, when her life-work and work for life came, she 
did it under the most hampering disadvantages, and 
often amid bodily suffering which any ordinary woman 
would have made a sufficient excuse for absolute de- 
pendence upon others. Thus it v was with her as with so 
many of her sisters. So much of woman's work is artist- 
ically poor, not from any poverty of gift, but for lack of 
that practical training of the faculties which is indis- 
pensable to the finest workmanship. The power is 
there, but not the perfect mastery of the power. Alice's 



IOO ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

natural endowment of mind and soul was of the finest 
and rarest ; yet as an artistic force, she used it timidly, 
and at times awkwardly. She never, to her dying hour, 
reached her own standard ; never, in any form of art, 
satisfied herself. 

About ten years ago she wrote to a friend in the 
West : " I am ashamed of my work. The great bulk 
of what I have written is poor stuff. Some of it, maybe, 
indicates ability to do better — that is about all. I 
think I am more simple and direct, less diffuse and 
encumbered with ornament than in former years, all, 
probably, because I have lived longer and thought 
more." . 

In dealing with two forces, hers was the touch of 
mastery. \s an interpreter of the natural world she 
was unsurpassed. And when she spoke from her own, 
never did she fail to strike the key-note to the human 
heart. Her absorbing love for nature, inanimate and 
human, her oneness with it, made her what she was, 
a poet of the people. She knew more of principles 
than of persons, more of nature than of either. Her 
mind was introspective. Instinctively she drew the 
very life of the universe into her soul, and from her 
soul sent it forth into life again. By her nothing in 
nature is forgotten or passed by. " The luminous 
creatures of the air," the cunning workers of the ground, 
" the dwarfed flower," and the " drowning mote," each 
shares something of her great human love, which, 
brooding over the very ground, rises and merges into 
all things beautiful. One can only wonder at the rev- 
erent and observant faculties, the widely embracing 
heart, which makes so many of God's loves its own. 
The following is a verse in her truest vein : — 



SPECULA TIONS. IO I 

" O for a single hour 
To have life's knot of evil and self-blame 

All straightened, all undone ! 
As in the time when fancy had the power 

The weariest and forlornest day to bless, 
At sight of any little common flower ', 

That warmed her pallid fingers in the sun, 

And had no garment but her loveliness." 

After having lived in the city for twenty years, with 
not even a grassy plat of her own on which to rest her 
feet, the country sights and sounds, which made nearly 
thirty years of her life, faded into pictures of the past. 
In these days " life's tangled knot of evil," ?he phe- 
nomena of human existence, absorbed chiefly her heart 
and faculties. Much of the result of her questionings 
and replies we find in her " Thoughts and Theories." 
Even these are deeply veined with her passionate love 
of nature, though she speaks of it as a companion of 
the past. She says : — 

" I thank Thee that my childhood's vanished days 

Were cast in rural ways, 
Where I beheld, with gladness ever new, 

That sort of vagrant dew 
Which lodges in the beggarly tents of such 
Vile w r eeds as virtuous plants disdain to touch, 
And with rough-bearded burs, night after night, 
Upgathered by the morning, tender and true, 

Into her clear> chaste light. 

u Such ways I learned to know 
That free will cannot go 



I02 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

Outside of mercy ; learned to bless his name 
Whose revelations, ever thus renewed 
Along the varied year, in field and wood, 
His loving care proclaim. 

" I thank Thee that the grass and the red rose 
Do what they can to tell 
How spirit through all forms of matter flows ; 
For every thistle by the common way, 
Wearing its homely beauty ; for each spring 
That, sweet and homeless, runneth where it will ; 

For night and day ; 
For the alternate seasons, — everything 
Pertaining to life's marvelous miracle." 

But these later poems, with all their spiritual 
thought and insight, with all their tender retrospection, 
never equaled in freshness and fullness of melody, in 
a nameless rush of music, her first lyrics ; those lyrics 
written when the young soul, attuned to every sound in 
nature, thrilling with the first consciousness of its visi- 
ble and invisible life, like the reed of Pan, gave it all 
forth in music at the touch of every breeze. No won- 
der that so many pilgrims out in the world turned and 
listened to the first notes of a song so natural and 
" piercing sweet." To the dusty wayfarer the freedom 
and freshness and fullness of the winds and waves 
swept through it. Listen : — 

" Do you hear the wild birds calling ? 
Do you hear them, O my heart ? 
Do you see the blue air falling 
From their rushing wings apart ? 



TO THE WINDS. 103 

" With young mosses they are flocking, 
For they hear the laughing breeze 
With dewy fingers rocking 

Their light cradles in the trees ! " 

And here is one of her early contributions to the* 
" National Era," written before she was known to 
fame, and before she was paid money for her writing. 

TO THE WINDS. 

Talk to my heart, O winds — 

Talk to my heart to-night ; 
My spirit always finds 

With you a new delight — 
Finds always new delight, 
In your silver talk at night. 

Give me your soft embrace 

As you used to long ago, 
In your shadowy trysting-place, 

When you seemed to love me so — • 
When you sweetly kissed me so, 
On the green hills, long ago. 

Come up from your cool bed, 

In the stilly twilight sea, 
For the dearest hope lies dead 

That was ever dear to me ; 
Come up from your cool bed, 
And we'll talk about the dead. 

Tell me, for oft you go, 

Winds — lovely winds .of night — 



104 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

About the chambers low, 

With sheets so dainty white. 
If they sleep through all the night 
In the beds so chill and white ? 

Talk to me, winds, and say 

If in the grave be rest, 
For, O ! Life's little day 

Is a weary one at best ; 
Talk to my heart and say 
If Death will give me rest. 

In her minor lyrics of this period, those singing of 
some sad human experience, we find the same intimate 
presence of natural objects, the same simple, inimitable 
pictures of country life. I was a young girl when the 
following stanzas first met my eye. The exquisite sen- 
sation which thrilled me when I read them, was among 
the neveMo-be-forgotten experiences of a life-time. It 
was as if I had never read a poem before, and had but 
just received a new revelation of song; though the 
soul ff&m whence it came was to me but a name. 

Very pale lies Annie Clayville, 

Still her forehead, shadow-crowned, 
And the watchers hear her saying, 

As they softly tread around — 
" Go out, reapers ! for the hill-tops 

Twinkle with the summer's heat ; 
Lay out your swinging cradles, 

Golden furrows of ripe wheat ! 
While the little laughing children, 
- Lightly mingling work with play, 



A COUNTRY PICTURE. 105 

From between the long green winrows 

Glean the sweetly-scented hay, 
Let your sickles shine like sunbeams 

In the silvery flowing rye ; 
Ears grow heavy in the corn-fields 

That will claim you by and by. 
Go out, reapers, with your sickles, 

Gather home the harvest store ! 
Little gleaners, laughing gleaners, 

I shall go with you no more ! " 

Round the red moon of October, 

White and cold, the eve stars climb ; 
Birds are gone, and flowers are dying — 

'Tis a lonesome, lonesome time ! 
Yellow leaves along the woodland 

Surge to drift ; the elm-bough sways, 
Creaking at the homestead window, 

All the weary nights and days ; 
Dismally the rain is falling, 

Very dismally and cold ! 
Close within the village grave-yard, 

By a heap of freshest ground, 
With a simple, nameless head-stone, 

Lies a low and narrow mound ; 
And the brow of Annie Clayville 

Is no longer shadow-crowned. 
Rest thee, lost one ! rest thee calmly, 

Glad to go where pain is o'er ; 
Where they say not, through the night-time, 

" I am weary ! " any more. 

In her verses " To an Early Swallow," written within 



Io6 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

a year or two of her death, we find lines which revive 
much of the exquisite imagery which made her earlier 
lyrics so remarkable. She says : — 

My little bird of the air, 
If thou dost know, then tell me the sweet reason 
Thou comest alway, duly in thy season, 

To build and pair. 
For still we hear thee twittering round the eaves, 
Ere yet the attentive cloud of April lowers, 
Up from their darkened heath to call the flowers, 

Where, all the rough, hard weather, 

They kept together, 
Under their low brown roof of withered leaves. 

And for a moment still 

Thy ever-tuneful bill, 
And tell me, and I pray thee tell me true, 
If any cruel care thy bosom frets, 
The while thou flittest ploughlike through the air — 

Thy wings so swift and slim, 

Turned downward, darkly dim, 
Like furrows on a ground of violets. 

Nay, tell me not, my swallow, 

But have thy pretty way, 

And prosperously follow 

The leading of the sunshine all the day. 

Thy virtuous example 
Maketh my foolish questions answer ample — 

It is thy large delights keeps open wide 
Thy little mouth ; thou hast no pain to hide ; 
And when thou leavest all the green-topped woods 
Pining below, and with melodious floods 



LAST POEMS. 107 

Flatterest the heavy clouds, it is, I know, 
Because, my bird, thou canst not choose but go 

Higher and ever higher 

Into the purple fire 
That lights the morning meadows with heart's-ease, 
And sticks the hill-sides full of primroses. 

But tell me, my good bird, 
If thou canst tune thy tongue to any word, 
Wherewith to answer — pray thee tell me this.: 

Where gottest thou thy song, 

Still thrilling all day long, . 
Silvered to fragments by its very bliss ! 

Not, as I guess, 

Of any whistling swain, 
With cheek as richly russet as the grain 
Sown in his furrows ; nor, I further guess, 

Of any shepherdess, 

Whose tender heart did drag 
Through the dim hollows of her golden flag 
After a faithless love — while far and near, 

The waterfalls, to hear, 
Clung by their white arms to the cold, deaf rocks, 

And all the unkempt flocks 

Strayed idly. Nay, I know, 
If ever any love-lorn maid did blow 
Of such a pitiful pipe, thou didst not get 
In such sad wise thy heart to music set. 

So, lower not down to me 
From its high home thy ever-busy wing ; 
I know right well thy song was shaped for thee 

By His unwearying power 



lo.8 ALICE AND PHOEBE CARY. 

Who makes the days about the Easter flower 
Like gardens round the chamber of a king. 

And whether, when the sobering year hath run 
His brief course out, and thou away dost hie 
To find thy pleasant summer company • 
Or whether, my brown darling of the sun, 
When first the South, to welcome up the May, 

Hangs wide her saffron gate, 
And thou, from the uprising of the day 
Till eventide in shadow round thee closes, 
Pourest thy joyance over field and wood, 

As if thy very blood 
Were drawn from out the young hearts of the roses — 

'Tis all to celebrate, 

And all to praise 
The careful kindness of His gracious ways 

Who builds the golden weather 
So tenderly about thy houseless brood — 
Thy unfledged, homeless brood, and thee together. 

Ah ! these are the sweet reasons, 
My little swimmer of the seas of air, 
Thou comest, goest, duly in thy season ; 
And furthermore, that all men everywhere 

May learn from thy enjoyment 
That that which maketh life most good and fair 

Is heavenly employment. 

In the very latest of her suffering days, Alice Cary 
longed with longings unutterable to bring back as a 
living presence to herself every scene which inspired 
those early songs. In her portfolio lie her last manu- 



CRADLE SONG. 109 

scripts just as she left them, copied, each one, several 
times, with a care and precision which, in her active 
and crowded days, she never attempted ; copied in the 
new chirography which she compelled her hand to 
acquire, a few months before it was laid upon her 
breast, idle at last, in the rest of death. These late 
songs breathe none of the faintness of death. Rather 
they ring with the first lyric fervor ; they cry out for, 
and call back, within the very shadow of the grave, 
the woman's first delights. Witness these in this 
" Cradle Song," copied three times by her own hand, 
and never before published. 

CRADLE SONG. 

All the air is white with snowing, 
Cold and white — cold and white ; 

Wide and wild the winds are blowing, 
Blowing, blowing wide and wild. 
Sweet little 'child, sweet little child, 
Sleep, sleep, sleep little child : 
Earth is dark, but heaven is bright — 
Sleep, sleep till the morning light : 
Some must watch, and some must weep, 
And some, little baby, some may sleep : 
So, good-night, sleep till light ; 
Lullaby, lullaby, and good-night ! 

Folded hands on the baby bosom, 

Cheek and mouth rose-red, rose-sweet ; 

And like a bee's wing in a blossom, 
Beat, beat, beat and beat, 
So the heart keeps going, going, 
While the winds in the bitter snowing 



IIO ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

Meet and cross — cross and meet — 
Heaping high, with many an eddy, 
Bars of stainless chalcedony 

All in curves about the door, 

Where shall fall no more, no more, 

Longed-for steps, so light, so light. 
.Little one, sleep till the moon is low, 

Sleep, and rock, and take your rest ; 
Winter clouds wall snow and snow, 

And the winds blow east, and the winds blow west ; 
Some must come, and some must go, 
And the earth be dark, and the heavens be bright : 
• Never fear, baby dear, 
Wrong things lose themselves in right ; 

Never fear, mother is here, 
Lullaby, lullaby, and good-night. 

O good saint, that thus emboldenest 

Eyes bereaved to see, to-night, 
Cheek the rosiest, hair the goldenest, 

Ever gladdened the mother sight. 
Blessed art thou to hide the willow, 

Waiting and weeping over the dead, 
With the softest, silkenest pillow 

Ever illumined hair o'erspread. 
Never had cradle such a cover ; 

All my house with light it fills ; 
Over and under, under and over, 

'Broidered leaves of the daffodils ! 
All away from the winter weather, 

Baby, wrapt in your 'broideries bright, 
Sleep, nor watch any more for father — 

Father will not come home to-night. 



LAST POEMS. Ill 

Angels now are round about him. 
In the heavenly home on high ; 

We must learn to do without him — 
Some must live, and some must die. 
Baby, sweetest ever was born, 
Shut little blue eyes, sleep till morn : 
Rock and sleep, and wait for the light, 
Father will not come home to-night. 

Winter is wild, but winter closes ; 

The snow in the nest of the bird will lie, 

And the bird must have its little cry; 

Yet the saddest day doth swiftly run, 

Up o'er the black cloud shines the sun, 

And when the reign of the frost is done 

The May will come with roses, roses — 

Green-leaved grass, and red-leaved roses — 

Roses, roses, roses, roses, 

Roses red, and lilies white. 

Sleep little baby, sleep, sleep ; 

Some must watch, and some must weep ; 

Sweetly sleep till the morning light, 

Lullaby, lullaby, and good-night. 

By its side lies another manuscript, evidently written 
later. In it the same erect, clear writing is attempted, 
but the hand wavered and would not obey the will; 
the lines tremble, and at last grow indistinct. The 
poem begun was never finished. As the failing 
hand, the yearning soul left it, word by word, it is here 
given : — . 

Give me to see, though only in a dream, 
Though only in an unsubstantial dream, 



112 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

The dear old cradle lined with leaves of moss, 
And daily changed from cradle into cross, 
AVhat time athwart its dull brown wood, a beam 
Slid from the' gold deeps of the sunset shore, 
Making the blur of twilight white and fair, 
Like lilies quivering in the summer air ; 
And my low pillow like a rose full-blown. 

O, give mine eyes to see once more, once more, 
My longing eyes to see this one time more, 

The shadows trembling with the wings of bats, 
And dandelions dragging to the door, 
And speckling all the grass about the door, 

With the thick spreading of their starry mats. 

Give me to see, I pray and can but pray, 

0, give me but to see to-day, to-day, 

The little brown-walled house where I was born ; 
The gray old barn, the cattle-shed close by, 
The well-sweep, with its angle sharp and high ; 
The flax field, like a patch of fallen sky ; 
The millet harvest, colored like the corn, 
Like to the ripe ears of the new husked corn. 

And give mine eyes to see among the rest 
This rustic picture, in among the rest, 
For there and only there it doth belong, 

1, at fourteen, and in my Sunday best, 
Reading with voice unsteady my first song, 

. The rugged verses of my first rude song. 

As a ballad writer she was never equaled by any 
American man or woman. She loved the ballad, and 



BALLADS. 113 

there is ever in hers a naive, arch grace of utterance, in- 
imitable. In the ballad, hers was the very luxury of 
song. She never waited for a rhyme. Her rhythm rip- 
pled and ran with the fervor and fullness of a mountain 
brook after the springtime rains. Never quite over- 
taking it, she yet leaped and ran and sang with it in 
ever new delight. What a wild thrilling rush is there 
in such lines as these : — 

" Haste, good boatman ! haste ! " she cried, 
" And row me over the other side ! " 

And she stript from her finger the shining ring, 

And gave it me for the ferrying. 

"Woe's me ! my Lady, I may not go, 
For the wind is high and th' tide is low, 
And rocks like dragons lie in the wave, — 
Slip back on your finger the ring you gave ! " 

" Nay, nay ! for the rocks will be melted down, 
And the waters, they never will let me drown, 
And the wind a pilot will prove to thee, 
For my dying lovef, he waits for me ! " 

Then bridle-ribbon and silver spur 
She put in my hand, but I answered her : 
" The wind is high and the tide is low, — 
I must not, dare not, and will not go ! " 

Her face grew deadly white with pain, 
And she took her champing steed by th' mane, 
And bent his neck to th' ribbon and spur 
That lay in my hand, — but I answered her : 
8 



114 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

" Though you should proffer me twice and thrice 
Of ring and ribbon and steed the price, — 
The leave of kissing your lily-like hand 1 
I never could row you safe to th' land." 

" Then God have mercy ! " she faintly cried, 

" For my lover is dying the other side ! 
O cruel, O cruellest Gallaway, 
Be parted, and make me a path, I pray ! " 

Of a sudden, the sun shone large and bright 
As if he were staying away the night, 
And the rain on the river fell as sweet 
As the pitying tread of an angel's feet. 

And spanning the water from edge to edge 
A rainbow stretched like a golden bridge, 
And I put the rein in her hand so fair, 
And she sat in her saddle th' queen o' th' air. 

And over the river, from edge to edge, 
She rode on the shifting and shimmering bridge, 
And landing safe on the farther side, — 
" Love is thy conqueror, Death ! " she cried. 

The following is, perhaps, a more characteristic illus- 
tration of the pensive naturalness of her usual manner. 
Amid scores, it simply represents her utter ease of 
rhythm ; the blended realism and idealism of her 
thoughts and feelings : — 

And Margaret set her wheel aside, 
And breaking ofif her thread, 



JfALLADS. IIS 

Went forth into the harvest-field 
With her pail upon her head, — 

Her pail of sweetest cedar-wood, 

With shining yellow bands, 
Through clover, lifting its red tops l 

Almost unto her hands. 

Her ditty flowing on the air, 

For she did not break her song, 
And the water dripping o'er th' grass, 

From her pail as she went along, — 

Over the grass that said to her, 
Trembling through all its leaves, 
" A bright rose for some harvester 
To bind among his sheaves ! " 

And clouds of gay green grasshoppers 

Flew up the way she went, 
And beat their wings against their sides, 

And chirped their discontent. 

And the blackbird left the piping of 

His amorous, airy glee, 
And put his head beneath his wing, -— 

An evil sign to see. 

The meadow-herbs, as if they felt 

Some secret wound, in showers 
Shook down their bright buds till her way 

Was ankle-deep with flowers. 



Ii6 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

Her personal acquaintance with all the flowers and 
herbs of wood and field was as intimate as that she' 
had with people. She never generalizes in writing of 
them, but sets each one in her verse as she would in a 
vase, with the most delicate consciousness of its blend- 
ing lights and shades. A young Southern lady, who 
from childhood has been a loving student of Alice . 
Cary's poetry, remarked at her funeral, that she be- 
lieved she could find each flower of our Middle States, 
and many of those of the South, mentioned with ap- 
preciation in some part of Alice Cary's poems. 

Yet nothing in her music touches one so nearly as 
its manifold variations of the hymn of human life — 
now tender, pathetic, and patient \ now grand with res- 
ignation and faith, uttered always with a child-like sim- 
plicity; telling, most of all, how the human heart can 
love and suffer, how it can believe and find rest. It 
was her all-embracing pity, her yearning love for the 
entire race of Adam, which made her song a personal 
power, an ever present consolation to thousands of 
human souls who never measured her by any rule of 
poetic art. A friend who had loved her long, writing 
of her after death, said : — 

" Having passed one day from her chamber of an- 
guish, musing upon her despondency at being thus laid 
aside from active employment, we recounted her words 
at the bedside of another sufferer, who had never seen 
the afflicted poet. The latter, in reply, drew her com- 
mon-place book from beneath her pillow, and pointed 
to poem after poem by Alice Cary, which had been her 
solace during weary months and years of sickness and 
pain, and bade us give her greeting of gratitude to that 
unknown but beloved benefactor. Thus does the All- 



SCRAP-BOOKS. . 117 

seeing Father bless our unconscious influence, and 
often make our seeming helplessness more potent for 
good than our best hours of purposed effort." 

If the scrap-books of the land could to-day be drawn 
forth from their receptacles, we should find that Alice 
Cary has a place as a poet in the hearts of the people, 
which no mere critic in his grandeur has ever allowed. 
Nor would these scrap-books be solely the property of 
" gushing " girls, and tearful women. The heart of 
man responds scarcely less to her music. One of the 
most eminent and learned of living statesmen remarked, 
since her death, " It seems as if I had read almost 
every poem that Alice Cary has ever written : at least 
my scrap-book is full of them." 

There is no sadder inequality than that which exists 
often between the estimate an author places upon 
some work that has been wrought from his soul and 
brain, and the one placed on it by a careless reader, or 
the average public. It is the very tissue of being, the 
life-blood of one. To the other, often, it is but mere 
words; or, at most, an inartistic performance, whose 
best fate is to be superficially read and quickly for- 
gotten. Nor is it the fault of this public that it is all 
unknowing of the time and tears, the patience and sor- 
row and love often inwrought in the book which it so 
lightly passes over. It has nothing to do with the in- 
dividual life of the author; yet no less its thoughtless 
and sometimes unjust judgment makes one of the hard 
.facts of human life. There never was a more touch- 
ing illustration of this than in Alice Cary's feeling to- 
ward her little book of poems called " A Lover's 
Diary," published by Ticknor and Fields, in 1868, and 
the average reception of it. To the newspaper noticer 



Il8 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

it seemed but a tame collection of love-songs, never 
thrilling and often wearisome. This was the most that 
it was to many. To her it was her souPs flower laid 
upon the grave of her darling — the young sister who 
for so many years was the soul of her soul and the life 
of her life. It is the portrait of this sister (though 
casting but a dim shadow of her living loveliness) which 
graces the front of the book ; and the dedication be- 
low it, so simple, unfeigned, sorrowful, and loving, is 
one of the most touching utterances in literature. 

Here, and not here ! 
When following care about my house I tread 

Sadly, and all so slowly, 
There often seemeth to be round me spread 
A blessed light, as if the place were holy ; 

And then thou art near. 

Lost, and not lost ! 
When silence taketh in the night her place, 

And I my soul deliver 
All to sweet dreaming of thy sovereign grace, 
I see the green hills on beyond the river 

Thy feet have crossed. 

And so, my friend, 
I have and hold thee all the while I wait, 

Musing and melancholy ; 
And so these songs to thee I dedicate, 
Whose song shall flow henceforth serene and holy, 

Life without end. 

For dear, dear one, 
Even as a traveller, doomed alone to go 



ELMINA CARY. 1 19 

Through some wild wintry valley, 
Takes in his poor, rude hand the wayside snow 
And shapes it to the likeness of a lily, 

So have I done ; 

The while I wove 
Lays that to men's minds haply might recall 

Some bower of bliss unsaddened, 
Moulding and modulating one and all 
Upon thy life, so many lives that gladdened 

With light and love. 

Elmina Cary, the youngest child of Robert and 
Elizabeth Cary, seemed to take the place in Alice's 
heart and care, filled by the little sister Lucy in her 
youth. Elmina, who was married in early girlhood to 
Mr. Alexander Swift of Cincinnati, in her health very 
soon showed symptoms of the family fate. Marked by 
death at twenty, she lingered eleven years. A portion 
of this time her home was in New York. The air of 
Cincinnati was harsh for her, and needing always in 
her decline the ministry of her sisters, she spent much 
time with them, and died in their home. She was 
especially dependent upon Alice, as Phcebe says: 
" Greatly her junior, and of feeble frame, she was her 
peculiar care, a sister, child, and darling." She slowly 
faded from the earth, day by day growing lovelier to 
the last. She had the face and nature of Alice, 
touched with the softness of dependence, and the del- 
icate contour of youth. She was of especial loveli- 
ness, with a face to inspire a painter : oval, olive-tinted, 
crowned with masses of dark hair, lit with a pair of 
dark eyes as steadfast as ulanets and as shining as 



120 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

stars. All innocence and tenderness, many friends of 
Alice and Phoebe remember this younger sister as the 
gentlest genius of their household. She possessed 
the gift divine of her family — was a poet in tempera- 
ment and heart, as she must have been in utterance, 
had she lived. As it was, she wiled away many hours 
and years of pain in weaving together the ballads and 
hymns and artless stories of life, which thronged her 
heart and brain. 

Wearing " the rose of womanhood " in perfect loveli- 
ness, she faded away from the world, leaving no sign 
save in the hearts that loved her. There are women 
striving now to gather into their ripening souls the 
grace of patience, and that bright serenity which is its 
finest charm, who feel that it is easier to reach because 
she lived and because they loved her. ' And there are 
men wrestling in the world, their days crowded with 
its weary affairs, who nevertheless carry this woman's 
memory like a flower in their hearts, thanking God 
for it. For no man finds in a woman's soul the rev- 
elation of a rarer self, receiving it into his he'art as 
the incentive toward a better life, who ever loses it 
wholly, or who ever forgets the gentle face that was its 
visible type. 

When, in 1862, she died, Alice wrote : " My darling 
is dead. My hands are empty ; my work seems done." 
From that hour, till the " Lover's Diary " was pub- 
lished in 1868, Alice, amid her arduous toils, was writ- 
ing these songs in her praise, and for her sake. 

When the book was done, she laid it in the hand of 
a friend, saying, with tears in her eyes, " It will be some- 
thing to you, for you knew her." Its prevailing fault 
is its monotony. The sameness of its rhythm, and the 



"MONA SICK." 121 

constant repetition of one name, is sure to tire a reader 
after a few consecutive pages, if he knows nothing of 
its history, and never knew or loved personally its sub- 
ject. And yet no appreciator of true poetry can turn 
over its leaves without a constantly recurring sense of 
surprise at the exquisite beauty of phrase, and tender- 
ness of rhythm running through the minor lyrics. 
Phoebe says of them : " I do not know how this book 
may affect others ; but to me some of the poems have 
a most tearful and touching pathos. ' Mona Sick ' is 
perhaps one of the saddest and sweetest." Read as 
the rhythmic utterance of absolute truth — the heart's 
real cry over a loved one dying, and that loved one a 
sister — what a sacred sound these lines take on ! 

" Low lying in her pallid pain, 
• A flower that thirsts and dies for rain, 
I see her night and day : 
And every heart-beat is a cry, 
And every breath I breathe a sigh — 
O, for the May, the May ! 

" All the dreaming is broken through ; 
Both what is done and undone I rue. 
Nothing is steadfast and nothing true, 
But your love for me and my love for you, 
My dearest, dear little heart. 

" The time is weary, the year is old, 
The light o' the lily burns close to the mould ; 
The grave is cruel, the grave is cold, 
But the other side is the city of gold, 
My dearest, dear little heart" 



122 ALICE AND PBCEBE CARY. 

Coldly as this little book was received at its publi- 
cation, more of its lyrics are afloat on the great news- 
paper sea to-day than ever before } while several of 
them have been incorporated in standard books of 
poetry. There is one, than which Charles Kingsley or 
Alfred Tennyson never sang a sweeter, which has 
drifted to Europe and back, and been appropriated in 
a hundred ways, whose last stanza runs : — 

" The fisher droppeth his net in the stream, 

And a hundred streams are the same as one ; 
And the maiden dreameth her love-lit dream ; 

And what is it all, when all is done ? 
The net of the fisher the burden breaks, 
And always the dreaming the dreamer wakes." 

It was in attempting to deal with more material and 
cruder forces that Alice Cary failed. In the more 
comprehensive sense, she never learned the world. In 
her novels, attempting to portray the faults and pas- 
sions of men and women, we find her rudest work. 
Her mastery of quaintness, of fancy, of naturalistic 
beauty penetrated with pathetic longing, tinged with a 
clear psychological light, revealing the soul of nature 
and of human life from within, all give to her unaf- 
fected utterances an inexpressible charm. But the 
airy touch, the subtle insight, which translated into 
music the nature which she knew, stumbled and fell 
before the conflicting deformity of depraved humanity. 
The dainty imagination which decked her poetic forms 
with such exquisite grace could not stand in the stead 
of actual knowledge ; usurping its prerogative, it de- 
generated into caricature. She held in herself the pri- 



" CLOVERNOOK STORIES." 1 23 

mal power to portray human life in its most complex 
relations, and most profound significance. She missed 
the leisure and the experience which together would 
have given her the mastery of that power. It wrestled 
with false, and sometimes unworthy material. The 
sorrows and wrongs of woman, the injustice of man, 
the highest possibilities of human nature, she longed to 
embody them all in the forms of enduring art. A life 
already nearly consumed, sickness, weariness, and 
death, said No. Her novels are strong with passages 
of intense feeling ; we feel through them the surges of 
a wild, unchained power ; but as broad, comprehensive 
portraitures of human life, as the finest exponents of 
the noble nature from which they emanated, they are 
often unworthy of her. In interpreting nature, she 
never failed. Her " Clovernook Stories," her first in 
prose which reproduced perfectly the life ^that she 
knew, are pure idyls of country life and character, and 
in their fresh, original charm deserve their place amid 
the classics of English speech. In the utterance of 
natural emotion, crossed in its very pathos with psy- 
chical thought, surely she was never surpassed. I give 
an illustration from u An Old Maid's Story," in her 
" Pictures of Country Life." 

" When he spoke of the great hereafter, when our 
souls that had crossed their mates, perhaps, and per- 
haps left them behind, or gone unconsciously before 
them, dissatisfied and longing and faltering all the time ; 
and of the deep of joy they would enter into on recog- 
nizing fully and freely the other self, which, in this 
world, had been so poorly and vaguely comprehended, 
if at all ; what delicious tremor, half fear and half fervor, 
thrilled all my being, and made me feel that the dust 



124 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

of time and the barriers of circumstance, the dreary 
pain of a life separated from all others, death itself, all 
were nothing but shadows passing between me and the 
eternal sunshine of love. I could afford to wait, I 
could afford to be patient under my burdens, and to 
go straight forward through all hard fates and fortunes, 
assured that I should know and be known at last, love 
and be loved in the fullness of a blessedness, which, 
even here, mixed with bitterness as it is, is the sweet- 
est of all. What was it to me that my hair was black, 
and my step firm, while his hair to whom I listened so 
reverentially was white, and his step slow, if not feeble. 
What was it that he had more wisdom, and more expe- 
rience than I, and what was it that he never said, ' You 
are faintly recognized, and I see a germ close-folded, 
which in the mysterious processes of God's providence 
may unfold a great white flower.' We had but crossed 
each other in the long journey, and I was satisfied, for 
I felt that in our traversing up the ages, we should 
meet again." 

Another strong quality in much of her prose is its 
sturdy common sense. In her the poetical tempera- 
ment never impinged on a keen, unclouded judgment. 
In dealing with all practical matters she was one of the 
most practical of women. She 'betrays this quality in 
the utter directness with which she meets and answers 
many questions concerning every-day life and charac- 
ter. The last article in prose which she ever wrote, 
printed in the "New York Independent," was thus 
referred to by its editor : — 

" Lying upon her sick-bed, she who had never eaten 
the bread of idleness wrote for us the pungent denun- 
ciation of ' Shirks,' that appeared in the oaoer of Feb- 



"SHIRKS." 125 

ruary 2d. It was probably her very last article, and 
after that the weary hand that knew no shirking was 
still. She intended it to be the first of a series of i semi- 
didactic articles ' — so she wrote us." 

It contained these words : — 

" Blessed, indeed, is that roof-tree which has no fun- 
gus attachment, and blessed the house that has no 
dilapidated chair and third-rate bed reserved in some 
obscure corner for poor Uncle John, or Aunt Nancy ! 
To be sure, there are Uncle Johns and Aunt Nancys 
who are honestly poor, and legitimately dependent — 
not guilty, but simply unfortunate. It is not of such, 
however, that I am discoursing ; they will come under 
another head. It is of that sort that go not out, even 
through fasting and prayer — your 'truly-begotten 
shirks? 

" Talk of divine rights ! They are quite beyond 
that ; they do not seek to justify themselves. ' Dick, the 
rascal, has more than he knows how to spend ! ' says 
John. \ He will never miss the little I shall eat and 
drink.' And so it happens that a lank, dirty, coarse- 
shirted man, with an ill-flavored budget under his arm, 
and poverty of blood — for he is poor all through — 
skulks into John's house some morning ; and woe the 
day, for he never goes out. And after that, * eternal 
vigilance is the price ' at which his snuffy handkerchief, 
clay pipe, and queer old hat are kept out of the draw- 
ing-room. 

" And after the same fashion Aunt Nancy quarters 
herself upon Susan ; bringing with her, perhaps, a 
broken-boned and flyaway cotton umbrella, a bandbox, 
and some old-fashioned duds that were the finery of 
her girlhood. There is some feeling of rebellion, some 



126 , ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

feeble effort toward riddance, on the part of the house- 
holders ; but they are rich, and their doom is on them. 
And by and by things settle into unquiet quiet ; and 
John and Nancy are tolerated, if not accepted — being, 
whenever their habitual aggressiveness is inordinately 
aggravated, gotten back with gentle force into their ac- 
customed dens. Thus, facing no responsibility, assum- 
ing no position in society, nor even in the household, 
recognizing no duty, they are dragged along, And 
when tftat call comes to which they perforce must 
answer, Here am I — that event that happeneth unto 
all, for which there is no evasion and no substitute — 
they simply disappear. The world was no richer while 
they stayed, and it is no poorer now that they are gone. 
No single heart is bereft, even. The worm has eaten 
all the meat out of the shell, and has perished of the 
surfeit and of indolence • and why should mourners go 
about the streets ? " 

Alice Cary was emphatically a worker,, yet she never 
for a moment believed that mere industry could supply 
the lack of a mental gift. In a magazine article of 
great power she replied to Mr, Greeley on this subject, 
taking issue against him. It contained the following 
paragraph : — 

" I do not believe that a man always passes, in the 
long run, for what he is worth. It seems to me a hard 
saying. The vision that the poet or the painter tran- 
scribes and leaves a joy and a wonder to all time, may, 
I believe, have come all the same to some poor, un- 
lettered man, who, lacking the external faculty, so to 
speak, could not lay it in all its glorious shape and color 
on the canvas, or catch and hold it in the fastness of 
immortal verse. No, I cannot give up my comfortable 



ALICE CARY'S RELIGIOUS LIFE. 1 27 

faith, that in other worlds and far-off ages there will 
appear a shining multitude who shall, through death, 
have come to themselves, and have found expression 
denied them on earth/ beautiful souls, whose bodies 
were their prisons — who stammered or stood dumb 
among their kind, bearing alone the slights and dis- 
graces of fortune, and all the while conscious, in their 
dread isolation, of being peers of the poets and the 
kings, and of all the royal men and women of the 
world.'y 

Alice Cary lived to pass into that serene spiritual 
atmosphere which outlies the emotions and passions 
of youth ; where, in having outlived its love and sor- 
row, its loss and longing, no shadow fell between her 
soul and the Illimitable Love. Her " Thoughts and 
Theories " and " Hymns," contained in the volume of 
her poems published by' Hurd and Houghton, 1866, 
were chiefly the utterances of this period of her life. 
They called forth thousands of expressions of personal 
thanks and regard from all over the land, and yet they 
failed of universal recognition in the mere world of lit- 
erature. They won little or no praise in places Tkim 
whence she had a right to expect it. She considered 
them the best expressions of her mature power ; and 
the comparatively cold reception which she thought 
they received, especially from some of her personal 
friends, was a cause of grief. Aside from all sympathy 
of friendship, my opinion is that these poems never re- 
ceived justice. Yet the cause was scarcely with friends 
or in the public ; but was a part of the untoward con- 
ditions of her life. She was forced to write too much. 
Her name was seen in print too often. This is one of 
the heaviest penalties which genius incurs in earning 



128 ALICE AND PHCEDE CARY. 

its living by a pen. Its name comes to have a market 
.value, and is sold and used for that. Mere newspaper 
work, if tolerably well done, can bear this test for a 
longtime. But it is death to poetry to write it " on 
time," or to sell it in advance for a name. Necessity 
forced Alice to do this so often that, while her name 
never lost its hold upon the masses, it came to be rated 
lower in the estimation of critics, and in some sense 
her sweetest lyrics sink to the value of rhymes in the 
minds of her friends. Many loved Alice as a friend, 
who ranked her low as a poet ; and she knew it. But, 
heavy as the outer tax upon it was, the deep inner 
spring of her inspiration never failed \ from it chiefly 
flowed the poems in this book. Yet the excess of her 
daily labor was so much taken from its chances of 
success. Some of her warmest personal friends 
scarcely took the trouble to look within its covers, to 
see whether it contained rhymes or poems. They 
drank tea at her table, they waxed eloquent in her par- 
lor, they knew Alice that she was one of the noblest 
and sweetest of women ; after that, what did it matter 
what she thought, or felt, or did ! 

They never dreamed that, when the lights were out, 
and the bright parlor closed, the woman sometimes 
sat down and w r ept for the word of encouragement 
that was not spoken, for the little meed of apprecia- 
tion that was not proffered, which, could it have come 
from those whose judgment she valued, would have 
been new life and inspiration to her amid her ceaseless 
toil. 

No less this book of poems holds in thought and 
utterance many of the elements of enduring existence. 
It must live, because it is poetry, embodying in 



ALICE CARY'S HYMNS, 129 

exquisite rhythm and phrase the soul of nature and 
of human life ; live in the heart of the future when 
we who criticised it, or passed it by, are dead and 
forgotten. 

9 



130 ALICE AND PH(EBE CARY. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Alice's last summer. 

We have many proofs that a life devoted »to letters 
is favorable to longevity in women. With all the 
anxiety and care of following literature as a profession, 
with all the toil of obtaining a livelihood by it, they 
have as a rule lived to venerable years. A passionate 
yearning for continued human existence was a ruling 
characteristic of Alice Cary to her last conscious hour. 
She had inherited a constitutional tendency from her 
mother, which was unfavorable to robust health or 
to long life. Yet with different habits of work and of 
life, established early and persistently pursued, even 
she might have won the longed-for lease • of life, and 
have added another to the list of venerable names, 
whom we delight to venerate among women of 
letters. Truly, some proof of this is to be found in 
the fact that her brothers, sons of the same mother, 
who have spent their lives on and near the old home- 
stead farm in active, out-door, farmer life, are to-day 
strong, healthy, and robust men. 

Alice and Phcebe could not have been farmers, but 
in their twenty years of life in the city they could 
have followed, nearer than they did, the out-of-doors 
habits of their old country home. These barefooted 
rovers in country lanes, who grow up fostered by sun- 



CITY LIFE. 13 t 

shine, air, and sky, the intimate friends of bees and 
birds, of horses and cows, of the cunning workers of the 
ground and the murmuring nations of the summer air ; 
these lovers of common flowers with common names ; 
these rural queens who reigned supreme in their own 
kingdom, whose richest revenue to the day of their 
death was drawn from the wealth of nature left so 
far behind, in the full flower of their womanhood came 
to the great city, and began a new life, which the 
vitality of the old enabled them to endure for twenty 
years, but which drew constantly on their vital springs, 
without adding one drop to the sources of physical 
health. To attain the highest success which they sought, 
they needed both the attrition and opportunities of the 
city. Had they added to this new life, for a third of 
every year, their old pastimes and old pursuits, they 
might have added years to their existence. But no 
human being, city bred, much less pne country born, 
could have maintained the highest health or have 
prolonged existence in the hot air, with the sedentary 
habits, which made the daily life of Alice and Phoebe 
Cary for many years. The new life encroached upon 
the old vitality imperceptibly, and not until the very 
last year of their lives was either of them conscious 
of the fatal harm it had wrought. They exchanged 
the country habits and the familiar out-of-door haunts 
of the old farm for the roar of streets and the confin- 
ing air of a city house. Moreover, modest as this 
house was, it took much money to support it in such a 
place. This was all to be earned by the pen, and for 
many years it was earned almost exclusively by Alice. 
With her natural independence, her fear of financial 
obligation, her hatred of debt, her desire for a com- 



132 ALICE AND PUCE BE CARY. 

petency, her generous hospitality, it is easy to see how 
heavy was the yoke of work which she wore. Dear 
soul ! she might have made it lighter, could she have 
believed it. As it was, even to the last she was never 
free from its weight. There came a time when her 
personal life was work, work, work. Then there was 
the shadow of death always on the house. Elmina, 
the youngest darling of all, was fading day by day 
from before their eyes. Her outgoings were infre- 
quent and uncertain. The leisure moments of Alice 
and Phcebe were spent with her in her room. As she 
slowly faded, her sisters became more exclusively de- 
voted to her. At last it came to pass that Alice 
rarely left the house except on some errand of neces- 
sity. 

After Elmina's death, as the summers came round, 
she became more and more loth to leave her city home 
to go any where into the country. Not that her heart 
had let go of its old love of natural beauty, but because 
she came to dread journeys and the annoyance and 
inconvenience of travelling. What had been a neces- 
sity at times, during Elmina's life, remained a habit 
after her death. By this time Alice had herself 
merged into the invalid of the family. The crisis 
had come, when nature "demanded change, recreation, 
and rest. She turned her back on all. When her 
friends were away, scattered among the hills and by 
the sea, Alice, left alone behind her closed blinds, was 
working harder and more continuously than ever. 

The stifling summers waxed and waned, the ther- 
mometer would rise and glare at ioo°, cars and stages 
would rattle beneath her windows, but through all the 
fiery heat, through all the wearing thunder of the 



SEDENTARY HABITS. 133 

streets, the tireless brain held on its fearful tension, 
and would not let go. Phoebe would spend a month 
in the country, and return with sea-weeds and moun- 
tain mosses and glowing cheeks and eyes, as trophies ; 
but not so would Alice. Not that she never left the 
city. She did sometimes, for a few days, but it was 
in a brief, protesting way, that had neither time nor 
chance to work her help or cure. As the sedentary 
habits of her life increased, and the circulation of her 
blood lowered, she had recourse more and more to 
artificial heat, till at last she and Phoebe lived in a 
temperature which in itself was enough to make health 
impossible. In the relaxed condition inevitably pro- 
duced by this furnace atmosphere, they were sometimes 
compelled to go into the out-door air, and more than 
one acute attack of sickness was the* result to both 
sisters. 

These years of protracted labor, unbroken by recrea- 
tion, unblessed by the resuscitating touch of nature's 
healing hand, brought to Alice, shy and shrinking from 
birth, greater shrinking, keener suffering, and a more 
abiding loneliness. She was never selfishly isolated. 
There was never a moment in her life when tears did 
not spring to her eyes, and help from her hand at the 
sight of suffering in any living thing. She would go 
half-way to meet any true soul. She never failed 
in faith or devotion to her friends. No less as the 
years went on, she felt interiorly more and more alone ; 
she shrank more into her own inward life, and more 
and more from all personal contact with the great un- 
known world outside of her own existence. She had 
settled so deeply into one groove of life and labor, 
there seemed to be no mortal power that could wrest 



134 ALICE AND PHCEBE GARY. 

her out of it. She worked much, but it was not work 
that harmed her; she was sick, but was not sick 
enough to die. The shadow of death, falling from her 
mother's life across so many of her sisters, was creep- 
ing slowly, surely up to her. No less there was a time 
when it was in her power to have gone beyond it, out 
into the sunshine. She needed sunshine ; she needed 
fresher, freer, purer air ; she needed change and rest. 
She needed a will, wiser and more potent than her 
own, to convince her of the inexorable laws of human 
life, and then compel her to their obedience. She 
could never have entirely escaped the inevitable pen- 
alty of hereditary law ; but that she might have de- 
layed it to the outer line which marks the allotted time 
of average human life, no one finally believed more 
utterly than she did. Her disobedience of the laws 
of life was the result of circumstance, of condition 
and of temperament, rarely a willful fact; no less she 
paid the penalty — by her so reluctantly, so protest- 
ingly, so pathetically paid — her life. 

At last, all that she had she would have given for 
her life, her human life, but it was too late. I dwell 
on the fact, for thousands are following her example, 
and are hurrying on to her fate. We hear so much 
of people dying of work. Yet work rarely kills man 
or woman. If it is work at all, it is work done in 
violation of the primeval laws of life ; it is work which 
a compelling will wrings out from a dying or over- 
taxed body. 

Another summer — her last; the ceaseless, eager 
worker, how was it with her now? The low, quick 
rustle of her garments was no longer heard upon the 
stairs. -The graceful form no longer bent over her 



OVERTAXING, 1 35 

desk ; the face no longer turned from it, with the old 
thrilling glance of welcome, to the favored comer 
allowed to pass the guarded door sacred to consecrated 
toil. 

That winter of mortal anguish had done more to 
wreck Alice Cary, than all the years which she had 
.lived before. The rounded contours were wasted, the 
abundant locks, just touched with gray, were bleached 
white, the colorless skin was tightly drawn upon the 
features \ for the first time she looked a wreck of her 
former self. Yet she was a beautiful wreck ; the splen- 
dor of her eyes made her that. No agony, no grief, 
had been able to make their lustre less : till they 
closed in death, their tender glory never went out. 
She was almost a helpless prisoner now. She could 
not take a step save on crutches. She could not stir 
without help. Yet that which no power of entreaty 
could move her to do the summer before, she now 
longed to do at any hazard. The thunder of the 
streets had become intolerable to her tortured nerves 
and brain. The very friends who had urged her to 
leave the city the year before, now believed, in her 
helpless condition, that her going would be impossible. 
No less she went, — first to Northampton. 

A correspondent of the " New York Tribune " writes 
thus of her appearance at Round Hill : — 

" Alice, during a few weeks past, has been used to 
sit on the same east porch, when the sunsets have 
been particularly fine, and then the cane-seat rocking- 
chair of the dark eyed poetess has become a sort of 
throne. A respectful little group has always been 
gathered about it, and whenever it used to be whis- 
pered about of an evening, that Alice Cary had come 



136 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

out, somehow the tide of promenaders used to set 
more and more in that direction, but always in a quiet 
and reticent manner, just to get a glimpse of her, you 
know, while accidentally passing her chair. I believe 
that she dropped among the Round Hill people early 
one day in August, and was so quiet that she was 
regarded as a sort of myth by most of the frequenters 
of the place, never going into the dining-room nor into 
the great parlor, bigger than a barn ; but the people 
said she was there, and that she invested the house 
with an unusual interest. Her city home, however 
snugly appointed, cannot, I am sure, compensate one 
like her for the loss of country air, country sights, 
and country sounds." This writer apparently realized 
not her helpless state. At that time she could not 
rise in her chair to take her crutches without assist- 
ance. Yet as she sat there with the scarlet shawl 
thrown over her white robe, contrasting so vividly 
with pallid face and brilliant eyes, she made a lovely 
picture, to which many allusions have been made in 
public print since she passed away. The following is 
from Laura Redden (" Howard Glyndon " ), a woman 
who, under life-long affliction, -embodies in her own 
character the beautiful patience and peace which she 
felt so intuitively and perfectly in. our friend. 

" I knew her in every way, except through her own 
personality. I knew her through others ; through her 
writings ; through the interpretation of rny own heart ; 
and I remember very well, that once, when broken in 
health and saddened in spirit, I felt an undefinable 
impulse to go to her, and knew that it would do me 
good to do so. But I stopped, and asked myself, 
' Will it do her any good ? What can I give in return 



AT NORTHAMPTON. 13 7 

for what I take ? ' And I dismissed the impulse as 
selfish. I had, in spirit, gone up to the very door 
that stood between us, and after hesitating, as I stood 
beside it, I went away. But while I stood there, I 
thought of the meek, sweet sufferer on the other side. 
c She has so much more to crush her than I have, but 
she does not let herself be crushed,' I said. Then I 
felt ashamed and went away, resolving to murmur less, 
and to struggle more for strength and patience. I 
really believe that standing on the other side of the 
door did me almost as much good as going in would 
have done. 

" Later, when I came to Northampton, I found that 
she was under the same roof with me. But when 
some one said, ' Would you like to see her ? ' and it 
seemed as if the door stood ajar, I drew back, with- 
out knowing why, and said, ' No, not now.' 

" Once, when I sat reading under the trees, she came 
out leaning upon her two friends, one on each side. 
They spread a gay shawl on the grass for her, and she 
sat there under the shining light which came through 
the trees, and enjoyed the delicious calm of a cool, 
summer, Sabbath afternoon. How pale and worn and 
weak she looked, but how bright and unselfish through 
it all ! I watched her, unseen, and I prayed very 
earnestly that God would bless the pure country air 
and the country quiet to her. She thought then that 
they made her better ; but there were greener pastures 
and purer breezes in store for her, and she was not to 
stay long away from them. 

" I remember another evening that she came out on 
the east porch, and sat long in the dusk of the twilight. 
I sat so close that my garments brushed hers — but in 



138 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

the dark — quiet, unseen, and unknown ; and I was 
glad to have it so. Somehow there was an undefin- 
able charm in holding this relation to a person in 
whom I had so large an interest. It was so much 
better to feel that I knew her than it would have been 
to realize that she knew me. It seemed as if formal 
words would have taken away all this charm. When- 
ever my hand was upon the handle of the door, I drew 
it away again and said, ' Wait ! ' 

" When I heard the next morning that she was gone, 
I was sorry — not sorry that I had not spoken to her, 
but only sorry that she was gone. The place had lost 
half its beauty for me." 

Alice, who had promised a dear friend to visit her 
in her home in Northern Vermont, went thither from 
Northampton. Faithful hands served her, strong, 
gentle arms bore her on, in this last struggle for life. 
" How I was ever to get out of the cars, I did not 
know ; the thought of it filled me with dread and ter- 
ror," she said, "but there was to lift me out and 

carry me to the carriage. I never felt a jar, and when 
I sat down in the bay-window, and saw the view be- 
fore it, and felt the loving kindness which enveloped 
me, it seemed as if I had reached heaven." 

These words are written in that room in which she 
sat by the window where she afterwards wrote her 
" Invalid's Plea." From this bay-window in which she 
sat, she looked through a vista of maples out upon a 
broad expanse of meadow-lawn, whose velvet turf is 
of the most vivid malachite green, softened on its 
farther edge by a grove wherein the shades of spruce 
and pine, elm and maple, contrast and blend. Be- 
yond these woods Lake Memphremagog sets its glit 






LONGINGS FOR SUMMER REST. 139 

tering shield between the hills. On its farther side 
green mountains arise till they hold the white clouds 
on their heads. Below, Jay Peak stands over four 
thousand feet above the sea, while above, Owl's Head 
soars over three thousand, covered with* forest to its 
summit. It is a picture fit for Paradise. Yet it is 
but one glimpse amid many of the inexpressible 
beauty of this lake and mountain country of the 
North. She, sitting here, looked out upon this con- 
summate scene \ looked with her tender, steadfast eyes 
across these emerald meadows, to the lake shining 
upon her through the opening hills, to the mountains 
smiling down on her from the distant heaven, their 
keen amethyst notching the deep, deep blue of a 
cloudless sky. The splendor of this' northern world 
fell upon her like a new, divine revelation. The tonic 
in its atmosphere touched her feeble pulses ; the 
peace brooding in its stillness penetrated her aching 
brain with the promise of a new life. Without, the 
world was full of tranquillity ; within, it was full of 
affection and the words of loving kindness. Then 
she wondered (and her wonder was sad with a hopeless 
regret) why summer after summer she had lingered in 
her city home, till the crash and roar of the streets, 
coming through her open windows, had filled body 
and brain with torture. 

" How blind I was! " she exclaimed. " I said that 
I could not take the time from my work ; and now life 
has neither time nor work left for me. How much 
more, how much better I could have worked, had I 
rested. If I am spared, how differently I will do. I 
will come here every summer, and live. 91 

Alas ! before another summer, the winter snow had 



140 ALICE AND PHOEBE CARY. 

wrapped her forever from the earthly sight of this un- 
utterable beauty. 

Hers from the beginning was the fatal mistake of 
so many brain -workers — that all time given to re- 
freshment and rest is so much taken from the results 
of labor ; forgetting, or not realizing, that the finer the 
instrument, the more fatal the effects of undue strain, 
the more imperative the necessity of avoiding over- 
wear and the perpetual jar of discordant conditions; 
forgetting, also, that the rarest flowering of the brain 
has its root in silence and beauty and rest. 

Here in this window, whither she, wasted and suffer- 
ing, had been borne by gentle arms, our dear friend 
wrote her " Invalid's Plea," one of the most touching 
of her many touching lyrics : — 

" O Summer ! my beautiful, beautiful Summer, 
I look in thy face and I long so to live ; 
But ah ! hast thou room for an idle new-comer, 
With all things to take and with nothing to give ? 
With all things to take of thy dear loving kindness — 
The wine of thy sunshine, the dew of thy air ; 
And with nothing to give but the deafness and blind- 
ness 
Begot in the depths of an utter despair? 
The little green grasshopper, weak as we deem her, 
Chirps day in and out for the sweet right to live ; 
And canst thou, O Summer ! make room for a 

dreamer. 
With all things to take and with nothing to give — 
Room only to wrap her hot cheeks in thy shadows, 
And all on thy daisy-fringed pillow to lie, 
And dream of the gates of the glorious meadows, 
Where never a rose of the roses shall die ? " 



DEATH AND BURIAL. 141 



CHAPTER VIII. 

» ' \C 

ALICE S DEATH AND BURIAL. 

When a dear one, dying willingly, lets go of life, the 
loosened hands by so much reconcile us to their going. 
It was not so with Alice. Through physical suffering 
almost beyond precedent, through days and nights and 
years of hopeless illness, she yet clung to this life. 
Not through any lack of faith in the other and higher ; 
but because it seemed to her that she had not yet 
exhausted the possibilities, the fullness, and sweetness 
of this. She thought that there was a fruition in life, 
in its labor, its love, which she had never realized ; 
and even in dying she longed for it. 

The autumn before her death, in a poem entitled, 
" The Flight of the Birds," she uttered this prayer : — { 

" Therefore I pray, and can but pray, 
Lord, keep and bring them back when May 

Shall come, with shining train, 
Thick 'broidered with leaves of wheat, 
And butterflies, and field-pinks sweet, 
And yellow bees, and rain. 

" Yea, bring them back across the seas 
In clouds of golden witnesses — 
The grand, the grave, the gay ; 



142 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

And, if thy holy will it be, 
Keep me alive, once more to see 
The glad and glorious day." 

It could not be. " The golden witnesses " could 
only chant their spring music above her couch of final 
rest. Yet within one month of death, she was busier 
than ever with plans of happiness for others. " O ! if 
God only could let me live ten years longer," she said ; 
" it seems as if I wouldn't ask for any more time. I 
would live such a different life. I would never shut 
myself up in myself again. Then I would d(? some- 
thing for my friends ! " 

Phoebe, writing of her last days, says : — 

" Though loving and prizing whatever is good and 
lovely here, and keeping firm and tender hold of the 
things that are seen, yet she always reached one hand 
to grasp the unseen and eternal. She believed that 
God is not far from any one of us, and that the sweet 
communion of friends who are only separated by the 
shadowy curtain of death, might still remain unbroken. 

" During her last year of illness she delighted much 
in the visits of her friends ; entered with keenest zest 
into their hopes and plans, and liked to hear of all 
that was going on in the world from which she was 
now shut. She talked much of a better country with 
those who came to talk to her upon the land to which 
her steps drew near ; and so catholic and free from 
prejudice was her spirit, that many of those friends 
whom she loved best, and with whom she held the 
most sacred communion, differed widely from herself 
in their religious faith. 

" She loved to listen to the reading of poetry and of 



HER LAST POEM. 143 

pleasant stories, but not latterly to anything of an 
exciting or painful nature ; and often wanted to hear 
the most tender and comforting chapters of the Gospels, 
especially those which tell of the Saviour's love for 
women. At the beginning of each month she had 
been accustomed for some time to furnishing a poem to 
one of our city papers. On the first of that month of 
which she never saw the ending, she was unable to 
write or even to dictate. A whole week had gone by, 
when, speaking suddenly one day with something of 
the old energy, she asked to be placed in her chair, 
and to have her portfolio, saying, " That article must 
be ready to-day." She was helped from the bed as 
she desired, and, though unable to sit up without being 
carefully supported, she completed the task to which 
she had set herself. •The last stanza she wrote reads 
thus : — 

" ' As the poor panting hart to the water-brook runs, 
As the water-brook runs to the sea, 
So earth'.s fainting daughters and famishing sons, 
O Fountain of Love, run to Thee ! ' 

» 
" The writing is trembling and uncertain, and the pen 
literally fell from her hand ; for the long shadows of 
eternity were stealing over her, and she was very near 
the place where it is too dark for mortal eyes to see, 
and where there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge." 
She had written earlier what she herself called " A 
Dying Hymn," and it was a consolation to her to repeat 
it to herself in her moments of deepest agony. 

Earth, with its dark and dreadful ills, 
Recedes, and fades away ; 



144 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

Lift up your heads, ye heavenly hills : 
Ye gates of death, give way ! 

My soul is full of whispered song ; 

My blindness is my sight ; 
The shadows that I feared so long 

Are all alive with light. 

The while my pulses faintly beat, 

My faith doth so abound, 
I feel grow firm beneath my feet 

The green, immortal ground. 

That faith to me a courage gives, 

Low as the grave to go : 
I know that my Redeemer lives — 

That I shall live I know. 

The palace walls I almost see 

Where dwells my Lord and King ; 

O grave ! where is thy victory ? 
O death ! where is thy sting ? 

As her strength failed, she grew more and more fond 
of the hymns of her childhood, and frequently asked 
her friends to sing such hymns as, "Jesus, Lover of my 
soul," " Show pity, Lord, O Lord, forgive," " A charge 
to keep I have \ " and she loved to have them sung to 
old tunes. 

Her frequent quotation from Holy Scripture, when 
in intense pain, was, " Though He slay me, yet will I 
trust in Him." 

On Tuesday, February 7, she wrote her last poem, 



DEATH. 145 

the last line of which is. " The rainbow comes but with 
the cloud." Ev'fen after that, she attempted in her bed 
to make a cap for an aged woman who greatly loved 
her, and whose sobs in the Church of the Stranger, 
when her death was announced, moved the whole audi- 
ence to tears. But her fingers failed, and the needle 
stands in the unfinished cap ; for her own crown was 
ready, and she could not stay away from her corona- 
tion. She fell in a deep sleep, out of which she once 
exclaimed, "I want to go away." She passed away as 
she had always desired — waking into the better land 
out of a slumber in this. " For so He giveth his beloved 
sleep." <x 

The last published words that Phoebe ever wrote of 
her sister were these : " Life was to Alice Cary no 
holiday, and though her skies had gracious hours of 
sunshine, they had also many dark and heavy clouds ; 
and going back in memory now, I cannot recall a time 
when, looking upon her face, even during the deepest 
slumber that she ever knew, I could not see there the 
sad characters of weariness and pain ; until I beheld 
her at last resting from her labors in that sweet, 
untroubled sleep which God giveth his beloved." . 

When, February 13, 1870, the telegraphic dispatch 
swept through the land saying, u Alice Cary died yes- 
terday. She will be buried to-morrow, from the Church 
of the Stranger/' the announcement was followed by 
a simultaneous outburst of sorrow. Almost every 
journal throughout the country published a biograph- 
ical sketch, accompanied with expressions of personal 
loss. In hundreds of these notices, still preserved, 
the remarkable feature is that no matter how remote 
the journal in which eacK was published, it is more an 



146 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

expression of individual sorrow at the departure of a 
beloved friend, than of mere regret at the death of 
an author. Thus, quoting at random, we find whole 
columns of her life beginning with sentences like these : 
" With a sense of bereavement that we cannot express, 
we record the death of our dear friend, Alice Cary." 

" The bare mention of the death of Alice Gary will 
be sadly sufficient to cause a feeling of sorrow in 
many a household in every part of the country." 

" A woman who could stand up for her rights with- 
out arousing the animosities of others, who was a 
philanthropist without either cant, affectation, or bit- 
terness^ who wrote many true poems, but lived one 
sweeter and truer than she ever wrote ; such was our 
universally beloved Alice CaryA May He that give th 
his beloved peace, give us, who knew her beautiful 
life, the grace to imitate it." 

" She had created for herself many friends whom 
she never saw, and many who had never seen her 
until they beheld her lying in her last sleep in the 
house of prayer. Among these was one gentleman 
w r ell known in scientific circles, — a man supposed to 
have little of poetic juice in the dry composition of 
his nature. He surprised a friend who sat near him, 
by his exhibition of feeling while the address was 
delivered \ and at the close, in explanation of his 
great emotion, he said : ' I have read every line that 
woman ever published. I have never spoken to her ; 
but I tell you she was the largest-hearted woman that 
ever lived ! ' " 

A letter from New York to the " Boston .Post," 
dated February 15, 1870, contains the following allu- 
sions to her funeral. 



ALICE GARY'S FUNERAL. 147 

" Dear Alice Cary, sweet singer of the heart, is gone. 
New York was shrouded in snow when her gentle face 
was shut away from human sight forever. In the plain 
little Church of the Stranger, with her true friend, 
Dr. Deems, officiating, and many other true friends 
gathered around in mourning silence, with streets all 
muffled into sympathetic stillness by the heavy drift- 
ing snow, and deep, strong sorrow rising from hearts to 
eyes, the sad funeral rites were performed. Rarely 
has a more touching scene been witnessed than that 
which separated Alice Cary from the world that loved 
her. Many of those present were moved to tears, 
though only one was bound to her by kinship. That 
one was her sister Phoebe, her constant companion 
from childhood, and more than her sister — her second 
self — through thirty years of literary trial. The little 
church was filled with literary friends who had grown 
warmly attached to both during their twenty years' 
residence- in New York. All the members of Sorosis 
were present to pay a final tribute to her who had 
been their first President. Many prominent journal- 
ists and authors were also there, forgetful, for the time, 
of all but the solemn sadness around them. Near the 
rosewood coffin that contained the body of the sweet 
poet, sat Horace Greeley, Bayard Taylor, Richard 
B. Kimball, Oliver Johnson, P. T. Barnum, Frank B. 
Carpenter, A. J. Johnson, and Dr. W. W. Hall, who, 
for near and special friendship during her life, were 
chosen to be nearest to her to the grave. When the 
sad rites of the Church were concluded, the body was 
borne forth and taken to Greenwood Cemetery, the 
snow still falling heavily, and covering all things with 
a pure white shroud. It seemed as though nature 



148 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

were in sympathy with human sorrow, till the grave 
was closed, for then the snow almost ceased, though 
the sky remained dark, and the silence continued. 
And thus the mortal part of Alice Cary was laid at 
rest forever." 

Horace Greeley, speaking in private of her obsequies, 
said that such a funeral never before gathered in New 
York in honor of any woman, or man either ; that he 
never saw before in any one assembly of the kind, so 
many distinguished men and women, so many known 
and so many unknown. 

One of the greatest scholars of his time, sitting 
there, shed a silent tear for the sister-woman who, 
alone, unassisted, in life and death had honored 
human nature ; while a few seats off wept aloud the 
women, poor and old, who had lived upon her tender 
bounty. 

The next morning's issue of the " Tribune " gave 
the following report of the funeral : 

ALICE CARY'S FUNERAL. 

The funeral of Miss Alice Cary took place at the 
Church of the Stranger, on Mercer Street, at one o'clock 
yesterday afternoon • and, despite the severe snow- 
storm which must have prevented many from coming, 
was attended by a very large number of the friends 
and admirers of the deceased poet. The service 
opened with an organ voluntary from the "Messiah," 
followed by the anthem, " Vital Spark of Heavenly 
Flame." Dr. Deems, the pastor of the church, read 
a selection from the 15th chapter of St. Paul's Epistle 
to the Corinthians, and then said : — 



ALICE'S FUNERAL SERMON. 149 

" I have not thought of a single word to say to you 
to-day, and I do not know that it is necessary to say 
one word more than is set down in the Church service. 
Most of us knew and loved Alice Cary, and to those 
who did not know her, my words would fail in de- 
scribing the sweetness and gentleness of her disposi- 
tion and temper. It seems, indeed, that instead of 
standing here, I, too, should be sitting there among 
the mourners." 

The speaker then described the patience with which 
she had borne her last sickness, and told how he had 
been by her side when the pain was so intense, that 
the prints of her finger-nails would be left in the palm 
of his hand as he was holding hers. But she never 
made a complaint. 

" She was a parishioner," said he, " who came very 
. close to my heart in her suffering and sorrow. I saw 
how good and true she was, and the interest she had 
in all the work I had in hand ; and I feel as if an as- 
sistant had died out of my family. The people of my 
congregation who did not know her, ought to be glad 
that I did. How many traits of tenderness have come 
before you here, how many observations have I been 
able to make to you, because I had been with her ! 
To-day I can only make my lament over her as you 
do, in the simplicity of affection. Men loved Alice 
Cary, and women loved her. When a man loves a 
woman, it is of nature : when a woman loves a woman, 
it is of grace — of the grace that woman makes by her 
loveliness ; and it is one of the finest things that can 
be said of Alice Cary, that she had such ■ troops of 
friends of her own sex. On the public side of her 
life she had honor, on the private side, honor and ten- 
derest affection. 



ISO ALICE AND PHCEBE GARY. 

" And now she has gone from our mortal sight, but 
not from the eyes of our souls. She is gone from her 
pain, as she desired to die, in sleep, and after a deep 
slumber she has passed into the morning of immor- 
tality. The last time I saw her, I took down her 
works and alighted on this passage, so full of conso- 
nance with the anthems just sung by the choir, and 
almost like a prophecy of the manner in which she 
passed away : — 

V 6C ' My soul is full of whispered song. 
My blindness is my sight ; 
The shadows that I feared so long 
Are all alive with light.'' 

" There was one thing in Alice Cary of which we 
had better remind ourselves now, because many 
of us are working-people, and people who work very 
much with our brains ; and I see a number of young 
people who are come, out of tenderness to her memory, 
to the church to-day, and there may be among them 
literary people just commencing their career, and they 
say, c Would I could write so beautifully and so easily 
as she did ! ' It was not easily done. She did noth- 
ing easily ; but in all this that we read she was an 
earnest worker ; she was faithful, painstaking, careful 
of improving herself, up to the last moment of her 
life. Yesterday I looked into the drawer, and the 
last piece of MS. she wrote turned up, and I said to 
Phoebe, ( That is copied ; ' and she said, c No, that is 
Alice's writing/ It was so exceedingly plain, it 
looked like print in large type, though she wrote a 
very wretched hand. But her sister told me that when 
she came to be so weak that she couldn't write much 



THE BURIAL SERVICE. 



151 



any longer, she began to practice like a little girl, to 
learn to form all her letters anew. She worked to the 
very last, not only with the brains, but the fingers. 

" When Phoebe wrote rne last Sunday that she was 
alone, and that Alice was gone, I couldn't help tell- 
ing my people, and there was a sob heard that went 
through the congregation. It was from an old lady, a 
friend of hers, who often told me about her, and spoke 
of her nobility of soul. Alice Gary once thought of 
making a cap for her, and she said, ' I will make a cap 
for Mrs. Brown/ but her fingers ached so, and Tier arm 
became so tired, she had to drop it ; and the needle 
is sticking in that unfinished cap now, just as she left 
it. She would have finished it, but they had finished 
her own crown in glory, and she couldn't stay away from 
her coronation. And we will keep that cap with care ; 
and I think Jesus will remind her of it, and say, 
c Child, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least 
ones, you did it unto me.' Should I speak for hours, 
I could only tell you how I loved her. She came to 
me in the winter of my fortunes, when I had very 
few friends, and I loved her, and will revere her 
memory forever — forever. And now I will not shed 
a tear for Alice Gary ; I am glad she is gone. I felt 
at once like saying, ' Thanks be to God/ when I heard 
that the pain was over ; and it was so delightful to go 
to stand over her, and see her face without a single 
frown, and to think, c She is gone to her Father and 
my Father ; ' and into his hands I commit her." 

After the Episcopal Burial Service had been read, 
the choir sang a hymn composed by Miss Phoebe 
Gary, called, "What Sweetly Solemn Thoughts." 
Then the friends of Alice Gary were requested to look 



152 ALICE AND FHCEBE CARY. 

upon her for the last time. The body was taken to 
Greenwood Cemetery for interment. The pall-bearers 
were Horace Greeley, Bayard Taylor, P. T. Barnum, 
Oliver Johnson, Dr. W. F. Holcombe, A. J. Johnson, 
F. B. Carpenter, and Richard B. Kimball. Among 
the persons present were Wm. Ross Wallace, the Rev. 
O. B. Frothingham, the Rev. C. F. Lee, the Rev. Dr. 
Cookman, James Parton, Fanny Fern, Mrs. Professor 
Botta, Theodore Tilton, Dr. Hallock, Mrs. Croly, Mrs. 
Wilbour, John Savage, George Ripley, and many 
others. 

The casket was plain, having merely a silver plate, 
on which was inscribed: "Alice Cary. a. d. 1820; 
a. d. 1871." 

At a special meeting of Sorosis, yesterday morning, 
the following preamble and resolutions were read and 
adopted : — 

" In Miss Cary's inaugural address to Sorosis, occurs 
a passage made memorable by the late sad event. 
After enlarging upon her own hopes and wishes con- 
cerning the growth and position which women should 
yet attain, and the manner in which they should yet 
vindicate themselves against all unjust charges, she 
said : ' Some of us cannot hope to see great results, 
for our feet are already on the down-hill side of life. 
The shadows are lengthening behind us and gathering 
before us, and ere long they will meet and close, and 
the places that have known us shall know us no more. 
But if, when our poor work is done, any of those who 
come after us shall find in it some hint of usefulness 
toward nobler lives, and better and more enduring 
work, we for ourselves rest content.' 

" Sooner, perhaps, than* she then thought, the way 



RESOLUTIONS OF SOROSIS. 1 53 

began to narrow, and her feet to falter on the road 
which leads to immortal life ; and, 

" Whereas, This change, so feelingly alluded to by 
Miss Cary, has finally overtaken her in the midst of her 
labors ; therefore, 

"Resolved, That in her removal this Society not 
only mourns the loss of its first President and most 
gifted member, but sympathizes with all womanhood 
in the loss of an earnest helper and most devoted 
friend. 

"Resolved, That her exceeding kindness, her. en- 
larged charity, her absolute unselfishness, her wonder- 
ful patience, her cordial recognition of every good 
word and work, endeared her inexpressibly to her 
friends ; while her genius commanded the warmest 
admiration of all those capable of appreciating sweet- 
est expression married to noblest thought. 

" Resolved, That her loyalty to woman, and her un- 
ceasing industry, shall incite us to renewed earnest- 
ness of effort, each in our own appointed place, to 
hasten the time when women shall receive recognition 
not only as honest and reliable workers, but as a class 
faithful and true to each other. 

"Resolved, That in presenting our heartfelt sym- 
pathy to the bereaved and lonely sister, we add the 
loving hope, that even ■ as the shadows have been 
swept from the bright, upward pathway of the de- 
parted spirit, they may also be dispelled from her sor- 
rowing heart, by an abiding faith in that Love which 
ordereth all things well." 

Rev. Henry M. Field, long a kind friend to both 
sisters, in a sketch of Alice in the " New York Evan- 
gelist," thus referred both to Mr. Greeley and the 
funeral of Alice : — 



154 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

" No wonder Mr. Greeley felt so deeply the death 
of one who had been to him as a sister, that he fol- 
lowed so tenderly at her bier, and in spite of the ter- 
rible snow-storm that was raging, insisted on following 
her remains to Greenwood, determined not to leave 
them till they were laid in their last resting-place. 
She was buried on Tuesday, amid one of the most 
violent storms of the winter. It seems sad to leave 
one we love in such desolation. But the storms can- 
not disturb her repose. There let her sleep, sweet, 
gentle spirit, child of nature and of song. The spring 
will come, and the grass grow green on her grave, and 
the flowers bloom, emblems of the resurrection unto 
life everlasting." 






- 



&L 



^^ 




PHCEBE CARY THE WRITER. 1 55 



CHAPTER IX. 

PHCEBE CARY. THE WRITER. 

. No singer was ever more thoroughly identified with 
her own songs than Phoebe Cary. With but few ex- 
ceptions, they distilled the deepest and sweetest music 
of her soul. They uttered, besides, the cheerful phi- 
losophy which life had taught her, and the sunny faith 
which lifted her out of the dark region of doubt and 
fear,, to rest forever in the loving kindness of her 
Heavenly Father. There were few things that she 
ever wrote for which she cared more personally than 
for her " Woman's Conclusions." The thought and the 
regret came to her sometimes, as they do to most of 
us, that in the utmost sense her life was incomptete — 
unfulfilled. Often and long she pondered on this 
phase of existence ; and her " Woman's Conclusions," 
copied below, were in reality her final conclusions con- 
cerning that problem of human fate which has baffled 
so many. 

A WOMAN'S CONCLUSIONS. 

I said, if I might go back again 

To the very hour and place of my birth ; 

Might have my life whatever I chose, 
And live it in any part of the earth ; 



156 ALICE AND PHCEBE GARY. 

Put perfect sunshine into my sky, 

Banish the shadow of sorrow and doubt ; 

Have all my happiness multiplied, 
And all my suffering stricken out ; 

If I could have known, in the years now gone, 
The best that a woman comes to know ; 

Could have had whatever will make her blest, 
Or whatever she thinks will make her so ; 

Have found the highest and purest bliss ■ 
That the bridal-wreath and ring inclose ; 
* And gained the one out of all the world, 

That my heart as well as my reason chose ; 

And if this had been, and I stood to-night 
By my children, lying asleep in their beds, 

And could count in my prayers, for a rosary, 
The shining row of their golden heads ; 

Yea ! I said, if a miracle such as this 

Could be wrought for me, at my bidding, still 

I would choose to have my past as it is, 
And to let my future come as it will ! 

I would not make the path I have trod 

More pleasant or even, more straight or wide ; 

Nor change my course the breadth of a hair, 
This way or that way, to either side. 

My past is mine, and I take it all ; 

Its weakness — its folly, if you please ; 
Nay, even my sins, if you come to that, 

May have been my helps, not hindrances ! 



«A woman's conclusions:' . 157 

If I saved my body from the flames 

Because that once I had burned my hand : 

Or kept myself from a greater sin 

By doing a less — you will understand ; 

It was better I suffered a^little pain, 

Better I sinned for a little time, 
If the smarting warned me back from death, . 

And the sting of sin withheld from crime. 

Who knows its strength, by trial, will know 
What strength must be set against a sin ; 

And how temptation is overcome 

He has learned, who has felt its power within ! 

And who knows how a life at the last may show ? 

Why, look at the moon from where we stand ! 
Opaque, uneven, you say ; yet it shines, 

A luminous sphere, complete and grand. 

So let my past stand, just as it stands, 
And let me now, as I may, grow old ; 

I am what I am, and my life for me 

Is the best — or it had not been, I hold. 

The guarded castle, the lady in her bower, the tum- 
bling sea, the shipwrecked mariner, were as real to 
Alice as to herself when she yielded to the luxury of 
ballad singing. But in Phoebe the imaginative fac- 
ulty was less prevailing \ it rose to flood-tide only at 
intervals. The dual nature which she inherited from 
her father and mother were not interfused, as in Alice, 
but distinct and keenly defined. Through one nature, 



15% ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

Phoebe Cary was the most literal of human beings. 
Never did there live such a disenchanter. Hold up to 
her, in her literal, every-day mood, your most precious 
dream, and in an instant, by. a single rapier of a sen- 
tence, she would thrust it through, and strip it of the last 
vestige of glamour, and you would see nothing before 
you but a cold, staring fact, ridiculous or dismal. It 
was this tenacious grip on reality, this keen sense of 
the ludicrous in the relation between words and things, 
which made her the most spontaneous of punsters, 
and a very queen of parodists. Her parodies are un- 
surpassed. An example of this literal faculty by 
which she could instantaneously transmute a spiritual 
emotion into a material fact, is found in a verse from 
her parody on Longfellow's beautiful lyric : — 

" I see the lights of the village 

Gleam through the rain and mist, 
And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me, 

That my soul cannot resist ; 
A feeling of sadness and longing 

That is not akin to pain, 
And resembles sorrow only 

As the mist resembles rain." 

Phoebe preserves all the sadness and tenderness of 
the original, while she transfers it without effort from 
the psychological yearning of the soul, into the region 
of physical necessity, from heart-longing to stomach- 
longing, in the travesty : — 

"I see the lights of the baker 

Gleam through the rain and mist, 
And a feeling of something comes o'er me, 
That my steps cannot resist ; 



PHCEB&S PARODIES. 159 

A feeling of something like longing, 

And slightly akin to pain, 
That resembles hunger more than 

The mist resembles rain." 

" Maud Muller " is one of the most sentimental as well 
as one of the most exquisite of modern ballads, yet 
what it prompts in Phoebe is not a tear for the faded 
woman sitting under the chimney log, nor a sigh for 
the judge who wholly deserves his fate, nor even an 
alas ! for the " might have been." It prompts in her, 
as'the most natural antithesis in the world, — 

KATE KETCHEM. 

Kate Ketchem on a winter's night 
Went to a party dressed in white. 

Her chignon in a net of gold 

Was about as large as they ever sold. 

Gayly she went, because her " pap " 
Was supposed to be a rich old chap. 

But when by chance her glances fell 
On a friend who had lately married well, 

Her spirits sunk, and a vague unrest 

And a nameless longing filled her breast — 

A wish she wouldn't have had made known, 
To have an establishment of her own. 

Tom Fudge came slowly through the throng, 
With chestnut hair, worn pretty long. 



i6o ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

He saw Kate Ketchem in the crowd, 

And khowing her slightly, stopped' and bowed ; 

Then asked her to give him a single flower, 
Saying he'd think it a priceless dower. 

Out from those with which she was decked, 
She took the poorest she could select, 

And blushed as she gave it, looking down 
To call attention to her gown. 

"Thanks," said Fudge, and he thought how dear 
Flowers must be at that time of year. 

Then several charming remarks he made, 
Asked if she sang, or danced, or played ; 

And being exhausted, inquired whether 

She thought it was going to be pleasant weather. 

And Kate displayed her "jewelry," 
And dropped her lashes becomingly ; 

And listened, with no attempt to disguise 
The admiration in her eyes. 

At last, like one who has nothing to say, 
He turned around and walked away. 

Kate Ketchem smiled, and said, "'You bet 
I'll catch that Fudge and his money yet. 



KATE KETCHEM. l6l 

" He's rich enough to keep me in clothes, 
And I think I could manage him as I chose. 

" He could aid my father as well as not, 
And buy my brother a splendid yacht. 

" My mother for money should never fret, 
And all it cried for, the baby should get. 

" And after that, with what he could spare, 
I'd make a show at a charity fair." 

Tom Fudge looked back as he crossed the sill, 
And saw Kate Ketchem standing still. 

"A girl more suited to my mind 
It isn't an easy thing to find ; 

" And everything that she has to wear 
Proves her rich as she is fair. 

"Would she were mine, and I to-day 
Had the old man's cash my debts to pay ! 

"No creditors with a long account, 
No tradesmen wanting ' that little amount ;' 

* But all my scores paid up when due 
By a father-in-law as rich as a Jew ! " 

But he thought of her brother not worth a straw, 
And her mother, that would be his, in law ; 
ii 



162 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

So, undecided, he walked along, 

And Kate was left alone in the throng. . 

But a lawyer smiled, whom he sought by stealth, 
To ascertain old Ketchem's wealth ; 

And as for Kate, she schemed and planned 
Till one of the dancers claimed her hand. 

He married her for her father's cash ; 
She married him to cut a dash. 

But as to paying his debts, do you know, 
The father couldn't see it so ; 

And at hints for help, Kate's hazel eyes 
Looked out in their innocent surprise. 

And when Tom thought of the way he had wed, 
He longed for a single life instead, 

And closed his eyes in a sulky mood, 
Regretting the days of his bachelorhood ; 

And said, in a sort of reckless vein, 
" I'd like to see her catch me again, 

" If I were free, as on that night 
When I saw Kate Ketchem dressed in white ! " 

She wedded him to be rich and gay ; 
But husband and children didn't pay. 



KATE KE : 163 

He wasn't the prize she hoped to draw, 
And wouldn't live with his mother-in-law. 

And oft when she had to coax and pout, 
In order to get him to take her out, 

She thought how very attentive and bright 
He seemed at the party that winter's night ; 

Of his laugh, as soft as a breeze of the south 
(Twas now on the other side of his mouth) ; 

How he praised her dress and gems in his talk, 
As he took a careful account of stock. 

Sometimes she hated the very walls — 
Hated her friends, her dinners, and calls ; 

Till her weak affection, to hatred turned, 
Like a dying tallow-candle burned. 

And for him who sat there, her peace to mar, 
Smoking his everlasting cigar — 

He wasn't the man she thought she saw, 
And grief was duty, and hate was law. 

So she took up her burden with a groan, 
Saying only, " I might have known ! " 

Alas for Kate ! and alas for Fudge ! 
Though I do not owe them any grudge ; 



164 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

And alas for any who find to their shame 
That two can play at their little game ! 

For of all hard things to bear and grin, 
The hardest is knowing you're taken in. 

Ah, well, as a general thing, we fret 
About the one we didn't get ; 

But I think we needn't make a fuss, 
If the one we don't want didn't get us. 

Her dual nature is strikingly illustrated in many of 
her poems. Purely naturalistic in their conception, as 
they rise they are touched and glorified with the super- 
natural. It does not blend with the essence of her 
song, while that of Alice is all suffused with it. The 
form and flavor of the latter's verse is often mystical. 
Her sympathies are deeply human, her love of nature 
a passion ; yet it is the psychical sense which im- 
presses her most deeply in all natural and human 
phenomena. Phcebe has little of this exquisite pan-, 
theism. It is not the soul in nature which she in- 
stinctively feels first ; it is its association with human 
experiences. The field, the wood, the old garden, the 
swallows under the eaves, the cherry-tree on the roof 
— she never wearies of going back to them ; all are 
precious to her for their personal remembrances. It 
is while she broods over the past, while the tenderest 
memories of her life come thronging back into her 
heart, that the muse of Phcebe Gary rises to its finest 
and sweetest strains. With a less subtle fancy than 
Alice, a less suffusive and delicate imagination in 



DRAMA TIC PO IVER. 165 

embodying human passion, she has a dramatic force 
often, which her sister seldom manifests. The lyric 
rush in Alice comes with the winds and waves ; it 
sings of nature's moods, interprets nature's voices ; in 
her utterance of human experience it is the tender, 
the plaintive, the pathetic, which prevail. The 
dramatic instinct in Phoebe kindles in depicting 
human passion, and rises with exultant lyrical ring as 
if it were so strong within her that it would be uttered. 
Thus some of her ballads are powerful in conception, 
and wonderfully dramatic in expression. The finest 
example of this we have in her u Prairie Lamp," a 
poem full of tragic energy. What a rhvthmic swell 
we feel through these lines : — 

" ' And hark ! there is something strange about, 
For my dull old blood is stirred ; 
That wasn't the feet of the storm without, 
Nor the voice of the storm I heard ! 

" l 'Tis my boy ! he is coming home, he is near, 
Or I could not hear him pass ; 
For his step is as light as the step of the deer 
On the velvet prairie grass.' 

" She rose — she stood erect, serene ; 
She swiftly crossed the floor, 
And the hand of the wind, or a hand unseen, 
Threw open wide the door. 

."Through the portal rushed the cruel blast, 
With a wail on its awful swell ; 
As she cried, l My boy, you have come at last/ 
And prone o'er the threshold fell. 



1 66 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

" And the stranger heard no other sound, 
And saw no form appear ; 
But whoever came at midnight found 
Her lamp was burning clear ! " 

" The Lady Ja'queline," one of the very finest of her 
ballads, expresses a quality characteristic of herself. 
It is full of personarfire, and yet in utterance it has the 
quaintness and sonorousness of an old ballad master. 

" False and fickle, or fair and sweet, 

I care not for the rest, 
The lover that l^nelt last night at my feet 

Was the bravest and the best ; 
Let them perish all, for their power has waned, 

And their glory waxed dim ; 
They were well enough when they lived and reigned, 

But never was one Jike him ! 
And never one from the past would I bring 

Again, and call him mine ; 
The King is dead, long live the King! 

Said the Lady Jaqueline." 

Nothing could be more dramatic than this gradation 
from exultation in the new, to a yet tender remem- 
brance of the old. 

" And yet it almost makes me weep, 

Aye ! weep, and cry, alas ! 
When I think of one who lies asleep 

Down under the quiet grass. 
For he loved me well, and I loved again, 

And low in homage bent, 



DRAMA TIC PO WER. 167 

And prayed for his long and prosperous reign, 

In our realm of sweet content. 
But not to the dead may the living cling, 

Nor kneel at an empty shrine \ 
The King is dead, long live the King / 

Said the Lady Jaqueline. 

" Yea, all my lovers and kings that were 

Are dead, and hid away 
In the past, as in a sepulchre, 

Shut up till the judgment day. 
False or fickle, or weak or wed, 

They are all alike to me ; 
And mine eyes no more can be misled, 

They have looked on royalty ! 
Then bring me wine, and garlands bring 

For my king of the right divine ; 
The King is dead, long live the King / 

Said the Lady Jaqueline." 

Equally powerful is she in the expression of per- 
sonal experience. Her friend Dr. Deems said that 
it always took his breath away to read her 

DEAD LOVE. 

We are face to face, and between us here 
Is the love we thought could never die ; 

Why has it only lived a year ? 

Who has murdered it — you or I? 

No matter who — the deed was done 
By one or both, and there it lies ; 



1 68 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

The smile from the lip forever gone, 
And darkness over the beautiful eyes. 

Our love is dead, and our hope is wrecked ; 

So what does it profit to talk and rave, 
Whether it perished by my neglect, 

Or whether your cruelty dug its grave ! 

Why should you say that I am to blame, 
Or why should I charge the sin on you ? 

Our work is before us all the same, 

And the guilt of it lies between us two. 

We have praised our love for its beauty and grace ; 

Now we stand here, and*hardly dare 
To turn the face-cloth back from the face, 

And see the thing that is hidden there. 

Yet look ! ah, that heart has beat its last, 
And the beautiful life of our life is o'er, 

And when we have buried and left the past, 
We two, together, can walk no more. 

You might stretch yourself on the dead, and weep, 
And pray as the Prophet prayed, in pain ; 

But not like him could you break the sleep, 
And bring the soul to the clay again. 

Its head in my bosom I can lay, 

And shower my woe there, kiss on kiss, 

But there never was resurrection^day 
In the world for a love so dead as this ! 



LOVE FOE MS. 1 69 

And, since we cannot lessen the sin 
By mourning over the deed we did, 

Let us draw the winding-sheet up to the chin, 
Aye, up till the death-blind eyes are hid ! 

No American poet has ever shown more passion, 
pathos, and tenderness combined, than we find em- 
bodied in many of the minor love poems of Phoebe 
Cary. Not only the " Dead Love," but the little poem 
which follows, is an example of these qualities. 

ALAS! 

Since, if you stood by my side to-day, 

Only our hands could meet, 
What matter if half the weary world 

Lies out between our feet ? 

That I am here by the lonesome sea, 

You by the pleasant Rhine ? 
Our hearts were just as far apart, 

If I held your hand in mine ! 

Therefore, with never a backward glance, 

I leave the past behind ; 
And standing here by the sea alone, 

I give it to the wind. 

I give it all to the cruel wind, 

And I have no word to say ; 
Yet, alas ! to be as we have been, 

And to be as we are to-day 1 



170 ALICE AND PUCE BE CARY. 

The literal quality of Phoebe's mind showed itself 
in her undoubting faith in spiritual communion, as it 
did in everything else. She would remark, " I think 

just came into the room; I feel her presence 

as distinctly as I do yours," speaking of one who long 
before had passed into spirit life. She "knew that 
the dead came back," she said, " just as she knew that 
she thought, or saw, or knew anything else." It was 
simply a fact which she stated literally and unexcitedly 
as she would any other. " It was not any more won- 
derful to her," she said, " that she could see and per- 
ceive with her soul, than that she was able to discern 
objects through her eyeballs." Never were any words 
which she uttered more literally true to her than 
these : — 

" The veil of flesh that hid 
Is softly drawn aside ; 
More clearly I behold them now. 
Than those who never died" 

Nor must this simple faith of these sisters in com- 
munion with spirits be confounded with any mere 
modern delusion. They inherited this belief from 
their parents. There had been no moment in their 
conscious existence, when they did not believe in this 
New Testament faith, that the dead are ministering 
spirits sent forth of God, to the heirs of salvation. 
Never did woman live possessed of a more sturdy 
common sense than Phoebe Gary. Nevertheless she 
spoke constantly of sympathy and communion with 
those whom death had taken, precisely as she spoke 
of intercourse with the living. To her, life held no 
verity more blessed than this which finds expression 
in her 



SPIRITUAL POEMS. 171 



BORDER-LAND. 



I know you arc always by my side, 

And I know you love me, Winifred, dear; 
For I never called on you since you died, 
But you answered tenderly, I am here ! 

So come from the misty shadows, where 
You came last night and the night before ; 

Put back the veil of your golden hair, 
And let me look in your face once more. 

Ah ! it is you ; with that brow of truth, 
Ever too pure for the least disguise ; 

With the same dear smile on the loving mouth, 
And the same sweet light in the tender eyes. 

You are my own, my darling still ; 

So do not vanish or turn aside ; 
Wait till my eyes have had their fill, 

Wait till my heart is pacified ! 

You have left the light of your higher place ; 

And ever thoughtful, and kind, and good, 
You come with your old familiar face, 

And not with the look of your angel-hood. 

Still the touch of your hand is soft and light, 
And your voice is gentle, and kind, and low ; 

And the very roses you wear to-night 
You wore in the summers long ago. 



172 ALICE AND PffCEBE CAJRY. 

O World ! you may tell me I dream or rave, 
So long as my darling comes to prove 

That the feet of the spirit cross the grave, 
And the loving live, and the living love ! " 

Perhaps the utterances of her soul which have 
most. deeply impressed others, and by which she will 
be longest remembered, are her religious poems. 
They are among the rarest in the English tongue, as 
felicitous in utterance as they are devout and helpful 
in spirit. It is the soul of their melody, more than 
the melody itself, which makes us glad. It is the 
faith in the good, visible and invisible ; the lark-like 
hope that soars and sings so high with such sponta- 
neity of delight; the love brooding over the lowliest 
things, yet yearning out toward God's eternities, rest- 
ing in his love at last, which make the inspiration of 
all these hymns. 

Hers was a loving and a believing soul. Day by 
day she walked with God. In no hour was He far 
from her. As natural as to breathe was it for her to 
lift her heart to the heart of all-embracing Love, 
whether she sat in her chamber alone, or went forth to 
meet Him in the outer world. From her hymns we 
take in the tonic of a healthy, hearty, happy soul. 
Like the simples which we draw forth from nature's 
soil, they are full of savor and healing. How we feel 
these in her 

FIELD PREACHING. 

I have been out to-day in field and wood, 
Listening to praises sweet, and counsel good, 



RELIGIOUS POEMS. 1 73 

Such as a little child had understood, 

That, in its tender youth, 
Discerns the simple eloquence of truth. 

The modest blossoms, crowding round my way, 
Though they had nothing great or grand to say, 
Gave out their fragrance to the wind all day ; 

Because his loving breath, 
With soft persistence, won them back from death. 

The stately maize, a fair and goodly sight, 

With serried spear-points bristling sharp and bright, 

Shook out his yellow tresses, for delight, 

To all their tawny length, 
Like Samson, glorying in his lusty strength. 

And every little bird upon the tree, 
Ruffling his plumage bright, for ecstacy, 
Sang in the wild insanity of glee ; 

And seemed, in the same lays, 
Calling his mate, and uttering songs of praise. 

The golden grasshopper did chirp and sing; 
The plain bee, busy with her housekeeping, 
Kept humming cheerfully upon the wing, 

As if she understood 
That, with contentment, labor was a good. 

I saw each creature, in his own best place, 
To the Creator lift a smiling face, 
Praising continually his wondrous grace; 

As if the best of all 
Life's countless blessings was to live at all ! 



174 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

So, with a book of sermons, plain and true, 

Hid in my heart, where I might turn them through, 

I went home softly, through the falling dew, 

Still listening, rapt and calm, 
To Nature giving out her evening psalm. 

While, far along the west, mine eyes discerned, 
Where, lit by God, the fires of sunset burned, 
The tree-tops, unconsumed, to flame were turned ; 

And I, in that great hush, 
Talked with his angels in each burning bush ! 

The hymn of Phcebe Cary, by which she is most 
widely known is her 

NEARER HOME. 

One sweetly solemn thought 

Comes to me o'er and o'er; 
I am nearer home to-day 

Than I ever have been before ; 

Nearer my Father's house, 

Where the many mansions be ; 

Nearer the great white throne, 
Nearer the crystal sea ; 

Nearer the bound of life, 

Where we lay our burdens down ; 

Nearer leaving the cross, 
Nearer gaining the crown 

But lying darkly between, 

Winding down through the night, 



"NEARER HOME:' 175 

Is the silent, unknown stream, 
That leads at last to the light. 

Closer and closer my steps 
Come to the dread abysm : 

Closer Death to my lips 
Presses the awful chrism. 

O, if my mortal feet 

Have almost gained the brink ; 

It it be I am nearer home 
Even to-day than I think ; 

Father, perfect my trust ; 

Let my spirit feel in death 
That her feet are firmly set 

On the rock of a living faith ! 

Yet like Alice with her " Pictures of Memory," she 
did not set a high intellectual value upon it. Until 
within a year or two of her death she was not conscious 
of its universal popularity. Before that time this lovely 
pilgrim of a hymn had wandered over the world, paus- 
ing at many thresholds, filling with " sweetly solemn 
thoughts " how many Christian hearts ! It had been 
printed on Sabbath-school cards, embodied in books 
of sacred song, pasted into scrap-books, read with tear- 
ful eyes by patient invalids in twilight sick-chambers, 
and by brave yet tender souls at their heyday, on 
whose wistful eyes faint visions of their immortal home 
must sometimes dawn, even amid the dimness of this 
clouded world. 

Within the last year of her life, Phoebe heard of an 



176 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

incident connected with this hymn, which made her 
happier while she lived. 

"A gentleman in China, intrusted with packages for 
a young man from his friends in the United States, 
learned that he would probably be found in a certain 
gambling-house. He went thither, but not seeing the 
young man, sat down and waited, in the hope that he 
might come in. The place was a bedlam of noises, 
men getting angry over their cards, and frequently 
coming to blows. Near him sat two men — one young, 
the other forty years of age. They were betting and 
drinking in a terrible way, the older one giving utter- 
ance continually to the foulest profanity. Two games 
had been finished, the young man losing each time. 
The third game, with fresh bottles of brandy, had just 
begun, and the young man sat lazily back in his chair 
while the oldest shuffled his cards. The man was a 
long time dealing the cards, and the young man, look- 
ing carelessly about the room, began to hum a tune. 
He went on, till at length he began to sing the hymn 
of Phoebe Cary, above quoted. The words/' says the 
writer of the story, " repeated in such a vile place, at 
first made me shudder. A Sabbath-school hymn in a 
gambling den ! But while the young man sang, the 
elder stopped dealing the cards, stared at the singer 
a moment, and, throwing the cards on the floor, 
exclaimed, — 

" * Harry, where did you learn that tune ? ' 

«' What tune?' 

" ' Why, that one you've been singing.' 

" The young man said he did not know what he had 
been singing, when the elder repeated the words, with 



THE STORY OF A HYMN. 177 

tears in his eyes, and the young man said he had 
•learned them in a Sunday-school in America. 

" ' Come/ said the elder, getting up ; ' come, Harry ; 
here's what I won from you \ go and use it for some 
good purpose. As for me, as God sees me, I have 
played my last game, and drank my last bottle. I have 
misled you, Harry, and I am sorry. Give me your 
hand, my boy, and say that, for old America's sake, if 
for no other, you will quit this infernal business/ " 

The gentleman who tells the story (originally pub- 
lished in " The Boston Daily News ") saw these two 
men leave the gambling-house together, and walk away 
arm in arm ; and he remarks, " It must be a source 
of great joy to Miss Cary to know that her lines, which 
have comforted so many Christian hearts, have been 
the means of awakening in the breast of two tempted 
and erring men on the other side of the globe, a reso- 
lution to lead a better life." 

It was a "great joy" to the writer. In a private 
letter to an aged friend in New York, with the story 
inclosed, she added : — 

"I inclose the hymn and the story for you, not 
because I am vain of the notice, but because I thought 
you would feel a peculiar interest in them when you 
know the hymn was written eighteen years ago (1852) 
in your house. I composed it in the little back third 
story bedroom, one Sunday morning, after coming 
from church ; and it makes me very happy to think 
that any word I could say has done a little good in the 
world." 

After the death of Phoebe, the following letter was 
received at the " New York Tribune " office. 



178 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 



SEQUEL TO THE GAMBLERS' STORY. 

To the Editor of the Tribune. 

Sir: Having noticed in the columns of the "Trib- 
une " a biographical sketch of Phcebe Cary, which 
contained an incident from my letters from China, I 
think that the sequel to the story of " The Gamblers " 
may interest her many friends. 

The old man spoken of in the anecdote has returned 
to California, and has become a hard working Christian 
man, while " Harry" has renounced gambling and all 
its attendant vices. The incident having gone the 
rounds of the press, the old man saw it, and finding its 
" credit," wrote to me about it. Thus Phoebe Cary's 
poem, " One Sweetly Solemn Thought," etc.,, has saved 
from ruin at least two who seldom or never entered a 
house of worship. I am yours, 

Russell H. Conwell. 

Traveller Office, Boston, Aug. 9, 187 1. 

In her latest hymns, although they express all the 
old love, all the old fullness of faith, we feel through 
them a vibration of grief, like one tone in a happy voice 
quivering with tears. Thus she cries in her very last 
hymn, " Resurgam : " — 

" O mine eyes, be not so tearful ; 
Drooping spirit, rise, be cheerful ; 
Heavy soul, why art thou fearful ? 

" Nature's sepulchre is breaking, 
And the earth, her gloom forsaking, 
Into life and light is waking. 



HYMNS OF FAITH. 179 

" O, the weakness and the madness 
Of a heart that holdeth sadness 
When all else is light and gladness ! 

"Though thy treasure death hath taken, 
They that sleep are not forsaken, 
They shall hear the trump, and waken. 

" Shall not He who life supplieth 
To the dead seed, where it ]ieth, 
Quicken also man, who dieth ? 

te Yea, the power of death was ended 
When He, who to hell descended, 
Rose, and up to heaven ascended. 

" Rise, my soul, then, from dejection, 
See in nature the reflection 
Of the clear Lord's* resurrection. 

" Let this promise leave thee never : 
If the might of dmth I sever, 
Ye shall also live forever /" 

In " Dreams and Realities," a poem published in 
" Harper's Bazar " after Phoebe's death, she exclaims : 

" If still they kept their earthly place, 
The friends I held in my embrace, 

And gave to death, alas ! 
Could I have learned that clear calm faith 
That looks beyond the bounds of death, 

And almost longs to pass ? " 



180 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

Thus, through the heavy cloud of human loss and 
longing the lark-like song arose into the very precinct 
of celestial light, sweet with unfaltering faith and 
undying love to the very last. The timid soul that 
fainted in its mortal house grew reassured and calm, 
rising to the realization of eternal verities. The 
world is better because this woman lived, and loved, 
and believed. She wrote, not to blazon her own 
being upon the world, not to drop upon the weary 
multitude the weight of an oppressive personality. 
She drew from the deep wells of an unconscious and 
overflowing love the bright waters of refreshment and 
health. Her subtler insight, her finer intuition, her 
larger trust, her more buoyant hope, are the world's 
helpers, all. The simplest word of such a soul thrills 
with an inexpressible life. It helps to make us braver, 
stronger, more patient, and more glad. We fulfill the 
lowliest task more perfectly, are more loyal to our 
duty, more loving to each other and to God, in the 
turmoil of the world, in the wearing care of the house, 
in sorrow as well as in joy, if by a single word we are 
drawn nearer to the all-encircling and everlasting 
Love. To do this, as a writer, was the mission of 
Phoebe Cary. Perhaps no lines which she has written 
express more characteristically or perfectly her de- 
vout and childlike faith in a loving Father's ordering 
of her earthly life, than the poem which closes her 
" Poems of Faith, Hope, and Love." 

RECONCILED. 

O years, gone down into the past ; 
What pleasant memories come to me, 



HYMNS OF FAITH. l8l 

Of your untroubled days of peace, 
And hours almost of ecstasy ! 

Yet would I have no moon stand still, 
Where life's most pleasant valleys die ; 

Nor wheel the planet of the day 

Back on his pathway through the sky. 

For though, when youthful pleasures died, 
My youth itself went with them, too ; 

To-day, aye ! even this very hour, 
Is the best time I ever knew. 

Not that my Father gives to me 

More blessings than in days gone by ; 

Dropping in my uplifted hands 

All things for which I blindly cry : 

But that his plans and purposes 

Have grown to me less strange and dim ; 

And where I cannot understand, 
I trust the issues unto Him. 

And, spite of many broken dreams, 
This have I truly learned to say, — 

The prayers I thought unanswered once, 
Were answered in God's own best way. 

And though some dearly cherished hopes 

Perished untimely ere their birth, 
Yet have I been beloved and blessed 

Beyond the measure of my worth. 



1 82 ALICE AND PUCE BE GARY. 

And sometimes in my hours of grief, 
For moments I have come to stand 

Where, in the sorrows on me laid 
I felt a loving Father's hand. 

And I have learned the weakest ones 
Are kept securest from life's harms ; 

And that the tender lambs alone 
Are carried in the Shepherd's arms. 

And sitting by the wayside blind, 
He is the nearest to the light, 
Who crieth out most earnestly, 
. " Lord, that I might receive my sight ! " 

O feet, grown weary as ye walk, 

Where down life's hill my pathway lies, 

What care I, while my soul can mount, 
As the young eagle mounts the skies ! 

O eyes, with weeping faded out, 
What matters it how dim ye be ? 

My inner vision sweeps, untired, 
The reaches of eternity ! 

O death, most dreaded power of all, 

When the last moment comes, and thou 

Darkenest the windows of my soul, 
Through which I look on nature now ; 

Yea, when mortality dissolves, 

Shall I not meet thine hour unawed ? 

My house eternal in the heavens 
Is lighted bv the smile of God I 



PIICEBE CARY THE WOMAN. 183 



CHAPTER X. 

PHGEBE CARY. — THE WOMAN. 

The wittiest woman in America is dead. There are 
others who say many brilliant things ; but I doubt if 
there is another so spontaneously and pointedly witty, 
in the sense that Sidney Smith was witty, as Phoebe 
Cary. The drawback to almost everybody's wit and 
repartee is that it so often seems premeditated. It is 
a fearful chill to a laugh to know that it is being 
watched for, and had been prepared beforehand. But 
there was an absolute charm in Phoebe's wit ; it was 
spontaneous, so coruscating, so "pat." Then it was 
full of the delight of a perpetual surprise. She was 
just as witty at breakfast as she was at dinner, and 
would say something just as astonishingly bright to 
one companion, and she a woman, as to a roomful of 
cultivated men, doing their best to parry her flashing 
scimitars of speech. Though so liberally endowed 
with the poetic utterance and insight, she first beheld 
every object literally, not a ray of glamour about it ; 
she saw its practical and ludicrous relations first, and 
from this absolutely matter-of-fact perception came 
the sparkling utterance which saw it, caught it, played 
with it, and held it up in the same instant. It is 
pleasant to think of a friend who made you laugh so 
many happy times, but who never made you weep. 



184 ALICE AND PHCEBE GARY. 

For instantaneously as her arrow of wit came, it 
sprung from too kind a heart ever to be tipped with a 
sting. There was always a prevailing vein of good 
nature in her most satirical or caustic remarks. In- 
deed, satire and sarcasm rarely sought vent in her 
glittering speech ; it was fun, sheer fun, usually, as 
kindly innocent in spirit as it was ludicrous and brill- 
iant in utterance. But a flash of wit, like a flash of 
lightning, can only be remembered, it cannot be re- 
produced. Its very marvel lies in its spontaneity and 
evanescence ; its power is in being struck from the 
present. Divorced from that, the keenest representa- 
tion of it seems cold and dead. We read over the 
few remaining sentences which attempt to embody the 
repartees and bon mots of the most famous wits of 
society, such as Beau Nash, Beau Brummel, Madame 
Du Deffand, and Lady Mary Montagu ; we wonder at 
the poverty of these memorials of their fame. Thus 
it must be with Phoebe Cary. Her most brilliant 
sallies were perfectly unpremeditated, and by herself 
never repeated, or remembered. When she was in 
her best moods, they came like flashes of heat light- 
ning, like a rush of meteors, so suddenly and con- 
stantly you were dazzled while you were delighted, 
and afterward found it difficult to single out any 
distinct flash, or separate meteor from the multitude. 
A niece of Phoebe says that when a school-girl she 
often thought of writing down in a book the mar- 
velous things which she heard her Aunt Phoebe say 
every day. Had she carried out her resolution, her 
book would now be the largest volume of Phoebe 
Cary's thoughts. As it is, this most wonderful of all 
her gifts can only be represented bv a few stray sen- 



PHCEBE CARY'S WIT. 185 

tences, gleaned here and there from the faithful mem- 
ories of loving friends ; each one invariably adding, 
" O, if I had only taken down the many wonderfully 
bright things that I heard her say." She had a neck- 
lace made of different articles which her friends had 
given her ; from one there was a marble, from another 
a curious nut from the East, from another a piece of ' 
amber, from another a ball of malachite or crystal, ■ 
and so on, till the necklace consisted of more than 
fifty beads, and, when open, stretched to a length of 
nearly four feet. 

She often wore this necklace on Sunday evenings, 
and while in conversation would frequently occupy her 
fingers in toying with the beads. " One evening a 
friend told her that she looked, with her necklace, like 
an Indian princess ; she replied that the only differ- 
ence was that the Indian had a string of scalps in 
place of beads. She said that she thought that the 
best place for her friends was to hang about her neck v 
and with this belief she had constructed the necklace, 
and compelled her friends to join it. Some of hei 
friends used to tell her that she ought to have a short- 
hand reporter as a familiar spirit, to jot clown her 
sharp sayings, and give them out to the world. But 
she replied that it would not be to her taste to be 
short-handed down to fame ; she preferred the lady 
with the trump, though she thought the aforesaid lady 
would be more attractive, and give a better name to 
her favorites, if she dressed in the costume of the 
period. ". 

A friend tells how, at a little party, where fun rose 
to a great height, one quiet person was suddenly at- 
tacked by a gay lady with the question, "Why don't 
you laugh ? You sit there just like a post ! " 



1 86 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

" There ! she called you a post ; why don't you 
rail at her ? " was Phoebe's instantaneous exclamation. 

Another tells how, at a dinner-table where wine 
flowed freely, some one asked the sisters what wines 
they kept. 

" O ! " said Phoebe, " we drink Heidsick ; but we 
keep mum." 

Mr. P. T. Barnum mentioned to her that the skele- 
ton man and the fat woman, then on exhibition in the 
city, were married. 

" I suppose they loved through thick and thin," an- 
swered Phoebe. 

"On one occasion, when Phoebe was at the Museum, 
looking about at the curiosities," says Mr. Barnum, 
U I preceded her, and had passed down a couple of 
steps. She intently watching a big anaconda in a case, 
at the top of the stairs, walked off (not noticing them), 
and fell. I was just in time to catch her in my arms, 
and save her from a severe bruising. 

" c I am more lucky than that first woman was, who 
fell through the influence of the serpent/ said Phoebe, 
as she recovered herself." 

Being one day at Wood's Museum, she asked Mr. 
Barnum to show her the " Infernal Regions," ad- 
vertised to be represented there. On inquiring, he 
found that they were out of order, and said, ■ — 

" The Infernal Regions have vanished ; but never 
mind, Phoebe, you will see them in time." 

" No, in eternity," was the lightning-like reply. 

On one occasion a certain well-known actor, then 
recently deceased, and more conspicuous for his pro- 
fessional skill than for his private virtues, was dis- 
cussed. " We shall never," remarked some one, " see 
again." 



PHCEBE CARY'S WIT. 187 

" No," quickly responded Phoebe ; " not unless we 
go to the pit." 

Says Oliver Johnson in his last tribute to her, in the 
" Tribune : " 

" Her religious sentiments were deep and strong, 
her faith in the Eternal Goodness unwavering. Edu- 
cated in the faith of Universalism, she believed to 
the last in the final salvation of all God's children. 
On this subject she spoke to the writer with great 
distinctness and emphasis only a few weeks before 
her death ; and once she indicated her faith by 
repeating with approbation the remark of one who 
said, in reply to the argument in favor of endless 
misery, ' Well, if God ever sends me into such misery, 
I know He will give me a constitution to bear it.' " 

On entering a shop one day, she asked the clerk to 
show her a lady's cap. He- understood her to say " a 
baby's cap." 

" What is the child's age ? " he inquired. 

"Forty /" exclaimed Phoebe, in a tone which made 
the young man jump with amazement. 

Among her papers there is an envelope that she has 
left behind, on which, in her own hand, is written one 
word: "Fun /" It is packed with little squibs of 
rhyme and travesty, evidently written for her own 
amusement, and thrust here out of sight, as unworthy 
to be seen by any eyes but her own. But they are so 
characteristic, and so illustrative of the quality of her 
mind which we are considering, that I am tempted 
to give two of them : not that either of the two 
is as funny as those left in the envelope ; but be- 
cause it trenches upon less pointedly absurd themes. 
One is, 



l88 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

MORAL LESSONS. 

BY AMOS KEATER. 

How doth the little busy flea 
Improve each awful jump; 
And mark her progress, as she goes, 
. By many an itching lump ! 

How skillfully she does her " sell ;" 
How neat she bites our backs, 

And labors hard to keep her well 
Beyond the reach of whacks ! 

I, too. in games of chance and skill, 
By Satan would be led ; 

For if you're always sitting still, 
You cannot get ahead. 

To lively back-biting and sich, 
My great ambition tends ; 

Thus would I make me fat and rich 
By living off my friends. 

The other bears no title : 

Go on, my friend, speak freely, pray ; 
Don't stop till you have said your say ; 
But, after you are tired to death, 
And pause to take a little breath, 
I'll name a dish I think is one 
To which no justice can be done ! 

It isn't pastry, old and rich, 

Nor onions, garlic, chives, and sicn ; 



11 MORAL LESSONS." 189 

Not cheese that moves with lively pace, 

It is'nt even Sweitzer Kase: 

It isn't ham, that's old and strong, 

Nor sausage kept a month too long ; 

It isn't beefsteak, fried in lard, 

Nor boiled potatoes when they're hard 

(All food unfit for Goth or Celt); 

It isn't fit even when they're smelt; 

It ain't what Chinamen call nice, 

Although they dote on rats and mice ; 

For, speaking honestly and truly, 

I wouldn't give it to a Coolie ! 

I wouldn't vally even a pup, 

If he could stoop to eat it up ; 

Nor give my enemy a bit, 

Although he sot and cried for it. 

Recallall pizen food and slop 

At stations where the rail-cars stop ; 

It's more than each and all of these, 

By just about sixteen degrees. 

It has no nutriment, it's trash ! 

It's meaner than the meanest hash, 

And sourer twenty thousand times, 

Than lemons, vinegar, and limes ; 

It's what I hate the man who eats ; 

It's poor, cold, cussed, pickled beets ! " 

I pause in these quotations with a sense of pain. 
The written line is such a feeble reflection of the liv- 
ing words which flashed from the speaking woman, so 
tiny a ray of that abounding light, that bounteous life, 
from earth gone out ! 

The same powerful sense of justice, the same deli- 



190 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

cate honor, the sensitive conscience, the tender sym- 
pathies, which prevailed in the nature of Alice, were 
also dominant in Phoebe. 

She not only wanted every breathing thing to have 
its little mortal chance, but, so far as she felt able to 
assist, it had it She was especially sympathetic to the 
aged and the young, yet her heart went out to the 
helpless, the poor, the oppressed everywhere. 

One of her most marked traits was a fine sense of 
honor which pervaded her minutest acts. This was 
manifested in her personal relations with others, in the 
utter absence of all curiosity. I# ever a woman lived 
who absolutely "minded her own business, and let 
that of other people alone," it was Phoebe Cary. If 
ever mortal lived who thoroughly respected the indi- 
vidual life and rights of others, it was Phoebe Cary. 
From the prevailing " littlenesses " which Margaret 
Fuller Ossoli says are the curse of women, she was 
almost entirely free. 

Her conscience ruled her in the words of her 
mouth, the meditations of her heart, and the minutest 
acts of her life. To do anything which she knew to 
be wrong would have been an impossibility to Phoebe 
Cary. This acute and ever accusing-conscience, com- 
bined with a lowly estimate of every power of her 
own, even her power of being good, filled her with a 
deep and pervading humility. She was not only 
modest, she was humble ; not in any cringing or igno- 
ble sense, but with an abiding consciousness that it 
was not possible for her to attain to her own standard 
of excellence in anything. These qualities, together, 
produced a blended timidity of nature and feeling, 
which was manifested even in her religious experience. 



LOVE OF APPROBATION. T9I 

Her apprehension of God as the universal and all- 
loving Father was deep and comprehensive. Her 
belief in Christ as an all-sufficient Saviour was sure 
and sufficing. Her faith and hope in them soared 
and sang in the sunshine of abiding trust. But the 
moment she thought of herself, she felt all unworthi- 
ness. It was her last thought, uttered in her last 
words, " O God, have mercy on my soul ! " 

As it is to all self-distrusting persons, personal ap- 
probation was dear to her. The personal responses 
which many of her poems called forth made her 
genuinely happy, and were to her, often, the most 
precious recompense of her labor. Nothing could 
have been more ingenuous or modest than the pleasure 
which she showed at any spontaneous response from 
another heart, called out by some poem of her own. 
She did not set a high value on herself, but if others 
valued her, she was glad. If she received the assur- 
ance that in any way her words had helped another 
human being, she was happier still. This happiness 
probably never rose to such fullness from the same 
cause, as when the incident of the two wanderers in 
China, and her hymn, " Nearer Home," first met her 
eyes in a newspaper. 

While she frankly said that she was happy in be- 
lieving that she came of good lineage, no one on earth 
was more ready to say, — 

" A man's a man, for a' that," 

whatever the shadow might be which rested on his 
birth or ancestry. Of sycophancy and snobbery she 
was incapable. She took the most literal measure of 
every human being whom she gauged at all, and the 



192 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARK 

valuation was precisely what the individual made it, 
without reference to any antecedent whatever. Shams 
collapsed in the presence of this truthful soul, and 
pretense withered away under her cool, measuring 
gaze. Mere wealth had no patent which could com- 
mand her respect, and poverty no sorrow that did not 
possess her sympathy and pity. " I have felt so poor 
myself/' she said ; "I have cried in the street because 
I was poor. I am so much 7iearer to poor people, 
than to rich ones. ,, 

The child of such parents, Phoebe, as well as Alice, 
could scarcely help growing up to be the advocate of 
every good word and work. Phoebe's pen, as well as 
her life, was ever dedicated to temperance, to human 
rights, to religion, to all true progress. It was impos- 
sible that such a woman should not have been devoted 
to all the best interests of her own sex. She believed 
religiously in the social, mental, and civil enfranchise- 
ment of woman. She hated caste in sex as she hated 
any other caste rooted in injustice, and the degrada- 
tion of human nature. She believed it to be the 
human right of every woman to develop the power that 
God has given her, and to fulfill her destiny as a 
human creature, — free as man is free. Yet it was 
in woman as woman that she believed. She herself 
was one of the most womanly of women. What she 
longed to see educated to a finer and fuller supremacy 
in woman, was feminine, not masculine strength. As 
she believed in man's, she believed no less in woman'? 
kingdom. Her very clearly defined ideas and feelings 
on this subject can in no way be so perfectly expressed 
as in her own words, published in the "New York 
Tribune." 



ADVICE TO WOMEN. 193 

ADVICE GRATIS TO CERTAIN WOMEN. 

BY A WOMAN, 

O, my strong-minded sisters, aspiring to vote, 
And to row with your brothers, all in the same boat, 
When you come out to speak to the public your mind, 
Leave your tricks, and your airs, and your graces be- 
hind ! 

For instance, when you by the world would be seen 
As reporter, or editor (first-class, I mean), 
I think — just to come to the point in one line — 
What you write will be finer, if 'tis not too fine. 

Pray, don't let the thread of your subject be strung 
With "golden," and "shimmer," "sweet," "filter," and 

"flung;" 
Nor compel, by your style, all your readers to guess 
You've been looking up words Webster marks obs. 

And another thing : whatever else you may say, 
Do keep personalities out of the way; 
Don't try every sentence to make people see 
What a dear, charming creature the writer must be ! 

Leave out affectations and pretty appeals ; 
Don't " drag yourself in by the neck and the heels," 
Your dear little boots, and your gloves ; and take heed, 
Nor pull your curls over men's eyes while they read. 

Don't mistake me ; I mean that the public's not home, 
You must do as the Romans do, when you're in Rome ; 
13 



194 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

I would have you be womanly, while you are wise ; 
'Tis the weak and the womanish tricks I despise. 

On the other hand : don't write and dress in such styles 
As astonish the natives, and frighten the isles ; 
Do look, on the platform, so folks in the show 
Needn't ask, "Which are lions, and which tigers ?" 
you know ! 

'Tis a good thing to write, and to rule in the state, 
.But to be a true, womanly woman is great : 
And if ever vou come to be that, -'twill be when 
You can cease to be babies, nor try to be men ! 

After months of solicitation from those connected 
with it, and at the earnest entreaty of Alice, she 
became at one time the assistant editor of the "Revo- 
lution." But the responsibility was always distasteful 
to her, and after a few months' trial, she relinquished 
it with a sense of utter relief. 

She, like Alice, was unfitted by natural temperament 
and disposition for all personal publicity. But in pri- 
vate intercourse, at home or abroad, her convictions 
on all subjects were earnestly and fearlessly expressed. 

Although so uncompromising in her convictions, 
Phcebe very rarely aroused antagonism in her expres- 
sion of them. If she uttered them at all, it was in a 
form which commanded merriment, if not belief. The 
truth which many another might unfold in an hour's 
declamation, she would sheathe in witty rhyme, in whose 
lines it would run and sparkle as it never could have 
done in bald prose. 

In the following lines we find her usual manner of 



PHCEBE ON WOMAN'S RIGHTS. 195 

expressing a truth, which so many others offer in a 
form harsh and repelling. Phoebe, who had just writ- 
ten these lines, brought them in, and read them one 
day to Alice, who was too ill to sit up. The turn of 
her words, and the tones of her voice, combined, were 
irresistible, and in a moment the beating rain outside, 
and the weary pain within were forgotten in merriment. 
Thus the truth of the rhyme, which from many another 
nature would have shot forth in garrulous fault-finding 
or expostulation, in the dress wherewith Phoebe decked 
it, amused far more than it exasperated, although the 
keenness of its edge was in no wise dulled or obscured. 

WAS HE HENPECKED? 

" I'll tell you what it is, my dear," 

Said Mrs. Dorking, proudly, 
" I do not like that chanticleer " 

Who crows o'er us so loudly. 

" And since I must his laws obey, 
And have him walk before me, 
I'd rather like to have my say 
Of who Should lord it o'er me." 

" You'd like to vote? " he answered slow, 
" Why, treasure of my treasures, 
What can you, or what should you know 
Of public men, or measures ? 

" Of course, you have ability, 
Of nothing am I surer ; 
You're quite as wise, perhaps, as I ; 
You're better, too, an4 purer. 



196 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

" I'd have you just for mine alone ; 
Nay, so do I adore you, 
I'd put you queen upon a throne, 
And bow myself before you." 

" You? d put Me ! you ? now that is what 
I do not want, precisely ; 
I want myself to choose the spot 
That I can fill most wisely." 

" My dear, you're talking like a goose — 
Unhenly, and improper " — 
But here again her words broke loose, 
In vain he tried to stop her : 

" I tell you, though she never spoke 
So you could understand her, 
A goose knows when she wears a yoke, 
As quickly as a gander." 

" Why, bless my soul ! what would you do ? 
Write out a diagnosis? 
Speak equal rights ? join with their crew, 
And dine with the Sorosis ? 

" And shall I live to see it, then — 
My wife a public teacher ? 
And would you be a crowing hen — 
That dreadful unsexed creature ? " 

"Why, as to that, I do not know ; 
Nor see why you should fear it ; 
If I can crow, why let me crow, 

If I can't, then you won't hear it ! " 



" WAS HE HENPECKED?'' 197 

" Now, why," he said, " can't such as you 
Accept what we assign them ? 
You have your rights, 'tis very true, 
But then, we should define them ! 

" We would not peck you cruelly, 
We would not buy and sell you ; 
And you, in tur?i, should think, and be, 
And do, just what we tell you ! 

" I do not want you made, my dear, 
The subject of rude men's jest ; 
I like you in your proper sphere, 
The circle of a hen's nest ! 

" I'd keep you in the chicken-yard, 
Safe, honored, and respected ; 
From all that makes us rough and hard, 
Your sex should be protected." 

" Pray, did it ever make you sick ? 
Have I gone to the dickens ? 
Because you let me scratch and pick 
Both for myself and chickens ? " 

" O, that's a different thing, you know, 
Such duties are parental ; 
But for some work to do, you'd grow 
Quite weak and sentimental." 

" Ah ! yes, it's well for you to talk 
About a parent's duty ! 
Who keeps your chickens from the hawk ? 
Who stays in nights, my beauty ? " 



198 ALICE AND PHCEBE GARY. 

"But, madam, you may go each hour, 
Lord bless your pretty faces ! 
We'll, give you anything, but power 
And honor, trust and places. 

" We'd keep it hidden from your sight 
How public scenes are carried ; 
Why, men are coarse, and swear, and fight"- 
" I know it, clear \ I'm married ! " 

"Why, now you gabble like a fool ; 
But what's the use of talking? 
'Tis yours to serve, and mine to rule, 
I tell you, Mrs. Dorking I " 

" O, yes," she said, " you've all the sense ; 
Your sex are very knowing ; 
• Yet some of you are on the fence, 
And only good at crowing." 

"Ah ! preciousest of precious souls, 
Your words with sorrow fill me ; 
To see you voting at the polls 
I really think would kill me. 

" To mourn my home's lost sanctity ; 
To feel you did not love me : 
And worse, to see you fly so high, 
And have you roost above me ! " 

"Now, what you fear in equal rights 
I think you've told precisely ; 
Thafs just about the ' place it lights] " 
Said Mrs. Dorking wisely. 



LOVE OF CHILDREN AND OF DRESS. 199 

Phoebe was very fond of children. Like Alice, she 
always had her special pets and darlings among the 
children of her friends. She was interested in all child- 
hood, but, unlike Alice, she preferred little boys to little 
girls. All her child lyrics are exceptionably happy, 
going straight to the understanding and hearts of little 
folk. She addresses them ever as dear little friends, 
jolly little comrades, never in a mother-tone ; while in 
Alice, we feel constantly the yearning of the mother 
heart. Her utterances to children thrill through and 
through with mother-love, its tenderness, its exultation. 
It is often difficult to realize that she is not the mother 
of the child to whom she speaks, and of whose loveli- 
ness she sings. 

Phoebe had a childlike love of decoration. Not that 
she was ever satisfied with her looks. She had the 
same distrust of her personal appearance, that she had 
of her personal powers. Nevertheless she had a pas- 
sionate lov'e of ornaments. 

Alice delighted in ample robes, rich fabrics, India 
shawls, and wore very few jewels. But Phoebe would 
wear two bracelets on one arm, from the sheer delight 
of looking on them. The Oriental warmth of her tem- 
perament was revealgd in her delight in gleaming gems. 
She loved them for their own sakes. There were 
ardors of her heart which seemed to find their counter- 
part in the imprisoned, yet inextinguishable fires of 
precious stones. She would watch and muse over 
them, moment after moment, as if in a dream. Her 
senses, pure and strong, were the avenues of keen and 
swift delights. If her conscience was stern, her heart 
was warm, and her capacity for joy immeasurable. 
The flashing of a jewel, the odor of a flower the face 



200 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

of youth, the subtle effluence of outraying beauty, the 
touch of a hand, the moulding of a perfect arm, every- 
thing which revealed, in sight or sound or form, the 
more subtle and secret significance of matter, moved 
a nature powerful in its passionate sensibility. 

To her dying hour she was a child in many ways. 
The Phoebe Gary who faced the world was dignified, 
self-contained, and self-controlled. But the child-heart 
avenged itself for what the world had cost it, when it 
came back to its own sole self. The last great strug- 
gle, in which alone it essayed to meet and conquer 
sorrow, snapped the cord of life. Thus in the slightest 
things, often, Phcebe could not bear disappointment 
any better than a child. No matter how bravely she 
tried, afterwards, in greater or less degree, she always 
went through the reaction of complete prostration. 
Often a disappointment like missing a train of cars, 
having a journey put off, or even a pleasant evening 
out deferred, would send her to her room in floods of 
tears. To be sure, she made no ado. The door was 
shut, and nobody was allowed to hear the wailing, nor 
were any comments made on it afterwards. Never- 
theless, when she appeared again, two or three, at least, 
always knew that " Phcebe had had her cry, and felt 
better." 

Modest and reticent in herself, yet merry and witty 
in her conversation with men, her habitual manner to 
the women whom she loved was most endearing. 
Without the shallow " gush," and insipid surface effer- 
vescence of sentimental adjectives, which in many 
women take the place, and attempt to hide the lack, 
of any deep affection, Phcebe was full of loving little 
ways, dear to remember. She had a fashion of 



PHCEBE' S L O VERS. 2 o I 

smoothing back your hair from your forehead, as if 
you were a child ; and of coming and standing beside 
you, with her hand laid upon your shoulder in a caress- 
ing touch. This action of hers was especially comfort- 
ing and assuring. It was not a startling, nervous 
hand resting on your shoulder. It was deep, dimpled, 
and abiding. It rested, soothed, and helped you at 
once. It came with a caress, and left you with a 
laugh. For by that time, its owner had surely said 
something which had changed the entire current of 
your thoughts and feeling, if you had been woe-begone 
and lonesome when she came. 

Emerson says, " All mankind love a lover ; " and 
Phcebe Cary surely did. But rarely in any solemn, 
heart-tearing way. 

"Believe me," she said once, "I never loved any 
man well enough to lie awake half an hour, to be 
miserable about him." 

" I do believe you," said Alice. " It would be hard 
to believe it, were you to say you ever had." 

Till within a few years of her death, it was only a 
distant adorer that Phcebe desired, a cavalier servente, 
who would escort her to public places occasionally, 
pay her chivalric homage on Sabbath evenings, and 
through the week retire to his affairs, leaving her 
* unbothered " to attend to hers. Her ideal of mar- 
riage was most exalted ; and she would deliberately 
have chosen to have lived "solitary to her dying day," 
rather than to have entered that sacred state, with 
the assurance that its highest and purest happiness 
would have been hers. 

" I prefer my own life to that of the mass of mar- 
ried people that I see," she would say ; " it is a dreary 



202 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

material life that they seem to me to live, no inspira- 
tion of the deepest love in it. And yet I believe that 
true marriage holds the highest and purest possibilities 
of human happiness." It was a perfectly characteristic 
reply that she made to the person who asked her if 
she had ever been disappointed in her affections : — 

"No; -but a great many of my married friends 
have." 

Equally characteristic was her answer to the erratic 
officer of our late war, who invited her to drive with 
him, and improved the opportunity it gave to ask her 
to marry him. She requested a short time to consider. 

" No," said the peremptory hero. " Now, or 
never." 

" Never ! " was the response. 

We may believe that the " never " did not lose in 
vim from the fact, known to her, that the same daring 
adorer had offered his name and fame no less ar- 
dently, but a few days before, to her sister Alice. 

They parted at the Twentieth Street door forever. 
He died not long after, of wounds received in battle. 

Phcebe was as innocently fond of admiration as she 
was of decoration. She was never vain of it, but 
always delighted when she received it. She received 
much. When it culminated in an offer of marriage, 
as it repeatedly did, Phcebe invariably* said, " No, I 
thank you : I like you heartily ; but I don't want to 
marry anybody." The result was, her lover remained 
her friend. If he married, his wife became her 
friend ; and the two women exchanged visits on the 
most cordial terms. There was not an atom of senti- 
mentality, in the form that young Sparkler calls " non- 
sense," in the character of Phcebe C-iry. 



PUCE BE AND ALICE. 203 

During the last ten years of her life, the woman's 
heart asserted itself in behalf of the woman's life. In 
1867, an offer of marriage was made her by a gentle- 
man eminent in the world of letters, a man of the 
most refined nature, extensive culture, and real piety. 
She felt a deep and true affection for him, as he did 
for her. The vision of a new life and home shone 
brightly in upon the shadow which disease and death 
had hung over her own. 

Although unconsciously, Alice had already entered 
the Valley of Death ; and when, with her failing 
strength, the loss of Phoebe suddenly confronted her, 
she shrunk back appalled. " I suppose I shall be 
sustained, if worst comes to worst I " she wrote ; " but 
I am very sad now." Phoebe looked into the face of 
her lover, and every impulse of her heart said, " Yes ; " 
she looked into the face of her sister, and her lips 
said without faltering, " No." Making the sacrifice, 
she made it cheerfully, and without ado. I doubt if 
Alice, to her dying day, realized how much Phoebe 
relinquished in her own heart, when she sacrificed the 
prospect of this new life for her sake. 

Referring to it once, Phoebe said, " When I saw how 
Mice felt, I could not leave her. If I had married, I 
shv&ld have gone to my own home ; now, she could 
never live anywhere but in her own house. I could 
not leave her alone. She has given so much to me, 
I said, I will give the rest of my life to her. It is 
right. I would not have it otherwise. Yet when I 
think of it, I am sure I have never lived out my 
full nature, have never lived a complete life. My life 
is an appendage to that of Alice. It is my nature 
and fate to walk second to her. I have less of every- 



204 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

thing that is worth having, than she ; less power, less 
money, fewer friends. 

'• Sometimes I feel a yearning to have a life my very 
own ; my own house, and work, and friends ; and to 
feel myself the centre of all. I feel now that k is 
never to be. O, if you knew how I carry her on my 
heart ! If she goes clown town, I am anxious till she 
comes back. I am so afraid some harm will happen 
to her. Think of it ! for more than thirty years our 
house has never been free from the sound of that 
cough. One by one, all have had it, and gone, but 
we two. Now, when I am alone, I have that constant 
dread on me about Alice. Of course I could not leave 
her. Yet (with a pathetic smile) I am sure we 
would have been very happy. Don't you think so?" 
Taking a picture from the inner drawer of her desk, 
she gazed on it long. " Yes, I am sure of it," she 
said, as she slowly put it back. 

Through the teachings of her parents, and the 
promptings of her own soul, Phcebe Cary believed in 
the final restoration, from sin to happiness, of the en- 
tire human race, through the love of the Father and 
the atonement of Jesus Christ. Her faith in God, 
her love for humanity, never wavered. No less, through 
her very temperament, her dependent soul needed all 
the support of outward form, as well as of inward 
grace. Alice could worship and be- happy in the soli- 
tude of her own room ; but Phcebe wanted all the ac- 
cessions of the Church service. She was deeply devo- 
tional. In her unostentatious devoutness, there was 
a touch of the old Covenanter's spirit. In her utter 
dependence- on the mercy *and love of God, there was 
an absolute humility of heart, touching to see. 



PHCEB&S RELIGIOUS FAITH. 205 

Although she believed in the final restoration of 
the human race to holiness, she believed no less in 
extreme penalties for sin. She expected punishment 
for every evil deed she did, not only here but hereafter. 
This belief, with her own natural timidity and humility, 
explains every cry that she ever uttered for divine 
mercy, even to the last. 

How much more to her was the Spirit of the Divine 
Master than the tenets of any creed, we may know 
from the fact that for many years of her life in New 
York, she was a member of the Church of the Pil- 
grims (Congregational), its pastor, Dr. Cheever, her 
dear friend : while at the time of her death she was a 
regular attendant at a Methodist church (the Church 
of the Stranger), and with its pastor, Rev. Dr. Deems; 
was the associate editor of " Hymns for All Chris- 
tians." ' Faith, hope, and love — love for God, love 
for her fellow- creatures — were the prevailing elements 
of her religious faith and experience. In the belief 
and practice of these she lived and died, a brilliant, 
devout, humble, loving, and lovable woman. 



206 ALICE AND PHCEBE GARY. 



CHAPTER XL 

PHCEBE'S LAST SUMMER. DEATH AND BURIAL. 

There is something inexpressibly sad in the very 
thought of Phoebe's last summer. One must marvel 
at the providence of God, which demanded of a soul so 
dependent upon the ministries of love, so clinging in 
every fibre of its beings that it should go down into 
the awful shadow, and confront death alone. Though 
hard, it would have been easier for Alice to have met 
such a fate. Yet it was not Alice, it was Phoebe, who 
died alone. She not only was alone, but sadder still, 
she knew it. In the very last days she said, " I am 
dying alone." 

The general impression is that with a constitution 
exceptional in her family, in robust health, she was 
suddenly smitten, and, without warning, died. This is 
far from the truth. Even in the summer of 1869, she 
complained of symptoms which proved to be the fore- 
runners of fatal disease. More than once she ex- 
claimed, " O this heaviness, this lethargy which comes 
over me, as if I could never move again ! I wonder 
what it is ! " But Alice was so confirmedly, and every 
day becoming so hopelessly the invalid of the house- 
hold, Phoebe's ailments were ignored by herself, and 
scarcely known to her friends. In the presence of the 
mortal agony which had settled on her sister's frame, 



PHOEBE'S CARE OF ALICE. 207 

Phoebe had neither heart nor desire to speak of the 
low, dull pain already creeping about her own heart. 
Her first anxiety was to spare her sister every external 
cause for solicitude or care. 

Nevertheless, there were times when her own mor- 
tality was too strong for her, and in the December be- 
fore the death of Alice, she lay for many days in the 
little room adjoining, sick almost unto death, with one 
form of the disease of which, at last, she died. While 
convalescing from this attack, I found her one day 
lying on a sofa in Alice's room, while Alice, in an. arm- 
chair, was sitting by her side. It was one of Alice's 
"best days." Not two months before her death, after 
days and nights of anguish which no language can 
portray, she yet had life enough left to be seated in 
that arm-chair, dressed in white, wrapped in a snowy 
lamb's-wool shawl, with a dainty cap, brave with pink 
ribbons, on her head. Moving against the back of the 
chair, she at last pushed this jaunty cap on one side, 
when Phoebe looked up from her pillow, and said with 
a sudden laugh, "Alice, you have no idea what a 
rakish appearance you present. I'll get you the hand- 
glass that you may see how you wear your cap." And 
this remark was the first of a series of happy sallies 
which passed between these two, stricken and smitten, 
yet tossing to and fro sunny words, as if neither had a 
sorrow, and as if all life stretched fair and bright be- 
fore them. 

Phoebe probably never knew, in this world, to what 
awful tension her body and soul were strained, in liv- 
ing through the suffering of Alice, and beholding her 
die. 

She herself said: "It seems to me that a cord 



2o8 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

stretches from Alice's heart to mine \ nothing can hurt 
her that does not hurt me." That that cord was 
severed at death, no one can believe. Beyond the 
grave Alice drew her still, till she drew her into the 
skies. 

After her sister's death she remarked to a friend, 
" Alice, when she was here, always absorbed me, and 
she absorbs me still ; I feel her constantly drawing me." 

You have read how, after seeing the body of her 
sister laid beneath the snow in Greenwood, Phoebe 
came back to the empty home, let the sunshine in, 
filled the desolate room with flowers, and laid down 
to sleep on the couch near that of Alice, which she had 
occupied through all her last sickness ; how she rose 
with the purpose and will to work, to prepare a new 
edition of all her sister's writings, — not to sit down 
in objectless grief, but to do all that her sister would, 
and, she, believed, did still desire her to do. There 
was not a touch of morbidness in her nature. By 
birthright hers was an open, honest, sunshiny soul. 
The very effluence of her music sprang from the inspi- 
ration of truth, faith, and love. In herself she had 
everything left to live for. Mentally, she had not yet 
risen to the fullness of her powers. She was still in the 
prime of a rich, attractive womanhood ; her black hair 
untouched of gray, her hazel eyes sparkling as ever, 
her cheeks as dimpled as a baby's, her smile, even with 
its droop of sadness, more winsome than of old. To 
her own little store were now added her sister's pos- 
sessions. Save a few legacies and mementos, every- 
thing of which she died possessed, Alice had bestowed 
upon Phoebe. The house was hers ; she its sole mis- 
tress, possessed of a life competency. All Alice's 



PHCEBE'S SOLITARINESS. 209 

friends were hers now in a double sense ; for they 
loved her for herself, and her sister also. She sat en- 
shrined in a tenderer and deeper sympathy than had 
ever enveloped her before ; her fame was growing, 
offering her every promise of a more brilliant and en- 
during repute in the world of letters ; her position as 
the leader of a most brilliant and intellectual society 
was never so assured. Dear soul ! life had come to 
her, why should she not be sunshiny and brave ? No- 
body had left her, not even her dead ; were not Alice 
and Elmina, and all her lost ones, going in and out 
with her, supporting her, cheering her ? why should she 
be bowed down and sorrowful ? No less that realistic 
nature, that tenacious heart, cried out for the old, tan- 
gible fellowship, for the face to face communion, the 
touch of the hand, the tender, brooding smile, even for 
the old moan of pain telling of the human presence. 
Alice was there — yes, she believed it ; yet it was with 
spiritual insight, not with the old mortal vision, that 
she beheld her. She was all womanly, made for deep 
household loves. With all her sweet beliefs, she was 
alone. 

" Alice left me this morning, and I am in the world 
alone," was the message she sent me, hundreds of 
miles away, the day that Alice died. 

Everything was hers, but what did it avail now? 
There was no Alice waiting on her couch, no Alice 
at the table, no Alice to pour out long, sweet songs in 
her ear ; the soul of her soul had passed from her. 
She tried to see the light, but the light of her life had 
gone out. 

Phoebe's resolution was to go on with her own life 
work, not as if her sister had not died, but as if in 
14 



210 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

passing away she had left a double work for her to 
perform. She felt that she had not only her own, but 
Alice's works to revise and edit, Alice's name to 
honor and perpetuate. For the first time in her life, 
the impulse, the energy to do, was to come from her- 
self alone. It could not be. Unconsciously she 
drooped. There was no Alice to whom to read what 
she had written. No Alice to live through and for, 
as she lived through her and for her for so many 
years. The tension of those years of watching and 
of ceaseless anxiety broken, the reaction of unutter- 
able weariness and helplessness told how fearful had 
been their strain. She did not quiescently yield to it 
She went out and sought her friends. She called her 
friends in to her. She did all in her power to shake 
off the lethargy stealing upon her ; not only to believe, 
but to feel, that she had much left to live for. In vain. 
She who had so loved to live, who by her physical as 
well as mental constitution could take delight in sim- 
ple existence ; she who was in sympathy with every' 
hope and fear which animates humanity, came to 
herself at last, to find that her real interest had all 
been transferred to the beloved objects who had passed 
within the veil of the unseen and eternal. 

Possessing, as she believed she did, "the old Cary 
constitution," with a vital hold on life which no other 
of her sisters had possessed, she made her plans in 
expectation of long life. And yet, when attacked 
with what seemed to be slight illness, when her physi- 
cian spoke hopefully to her of recovery, she replied, 
" that she knew of no reason why she should not 
recover, except that she neither found, nor could 
excite, any desire in herself to do so ; and this she said 



PHCEBE CARY'S DEATH. 211 

with a sort of wonder." Sickness, grief, it was not in 
her power to bear. They struck at once to the very 
core of life. She grew gray in a few weeks. She 
began to look strangely like Alice. Her own spark- 
ling expression was gone ; and in the stead, her whole 
face took on the pathetic, appealing look of her sister. 
This resemblance increased till she died. " She grew 
just like Miss Alice, " said Maria, her nurse, after her 
death. " She grew just like her in looks, and in all 
her ways. Sometimes it seemed as if she was Miss 
Alice." 

The week before she was taken sick, returning to 
New York, I called upon her at once. She was well, 
and out attending -the meeting of a convention. I 
left a message that, as it would be impossible for me to 
come again for some time, I should await her prom- 
ised visit in my own home. Weeks passed, in which 
a task I was bound in honor to perform by a certain 
time, withheld me from everything else, even from 
the reading of newspapers. Yet in the midst of it 
the thought of Phoebe often came to me, and I felt 
almost hurt at her non-appearance. Long after its 
date, a miscarried letter, written by the hand of 
another, came to me, telling of her sickness. When it 
reached me, she had already gone to Newport. I 
answered it, telling her that had I known of her state, 
I should have left everything- and come to her, as I 
was still ready to do. Carrying the letter down to 
post without delay, I took up the " Tribune," and the 
first line on which my eye rested was, u The death of 
Phoebe Cary." 

A short time before, Mrs. Clymer, the niece who 
had all her life-time been as a daughter to Alice and 



212 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

Phoebe, stood over the death-bed of her only brother. 
She closed his eyes for the last time, to lie down on 
her own bed of suffering, to which she was bound for 
weeks. Lying there, she learned of- the sickness of 
her aunt Phcebe, but nothing of its degree ; the latter 
withholding it from her. As soon as she was able to 
sit up, she left Cincinnati for Newport. Reaching 
New York, and stopping at the house on Twentieth 
Street for tidings, she was met with the telegram of 
her aunt's death. 

Such were the inexorable circumstances which with- 
held two who loved her, from her in her last hours ; 
a fact, the very memory of which, to them, must be an 
unavailing and life-long sorrow. Thus it was with 
nearly all of her friends ; they were out of the city, 
far from her, and scarcely knew of her sickness until 
they read the announcement of her death. 

She felt it keenly ; and in her last loneliness her 
loving heart would call out, "Where are all my 
friends ? " Yet at no time was she wholly bereft of 
the ministrations of affection. Hon. Thomas Jenckes, 
of Providence, Rhode Island, and Mr. Francis Nye, 
of New York, the friend and executor of both Alice 
and herself, made every arrangement for her convey- 
ance to Newport. She was accompanied thither by a 
devoted lady friend, and followed thither by another, 
who remained with her till after her death. Mr. Oliver 
Johnson made the journey to Newport expressly to see 
his old friend in her lonely and suffering state. The 
lady who was with her to the last, Mrs. Mary Stevens 
Robinson, daughter of Rev. Dr. Abel Stevens of the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, who, beside her nurse 
Maria, is the only person living who can tell truly of 



MRS. ROBINSON'S LETTER. 213 

Phoebe Cary's last hours, has, at the request of the 
writer, kindly sent the following graphic personal rec- 
ollections of Phcebe, and a record of those sad days 
at Newport. She says : — 

"I first met with Phcebe Cary in the winter of 
1853-4. She was still young and striking in her ap- 
pearance, with keen, merry, black eyes, full of intelli- 
gence and spirit, a full, well-proportioned figure, and 
very characteristic in gesture, aspect, and dress. She 
was fond of high colors, red, orange, etc., and talked 
well and rapidly. She was entirely feminine in de- 
meanor, careful, in the main, of the sensibilities of 
those whom she addressed, though so warm by nature, 
and so quick in her thought, as to be sometimes 
thrown off guard on this point, in the ardor of dis- 
cussion. My father was at this period editor of a mag- 
azine, and Alice was one of his contributors. As we 
lived in the same neighborhood, we exchanged fre- 
quent visits with the sisters ; we attending their even- 
ing receptions, and they our unceremonious social 
gatherings. At these companies Phoebe's conversation 
was more with gentlemen than with ladies ; partly be- 
cause she liked them better, and partly because they 
were sure to be entertained by her ; but she main- 
tained invariably a gentle reserve, was never ' carried 
away ' in the ardor or brilliancy of talking. Her wit 
had no sting, her frankness and sincerity were those 
of a child, and she was always 'pure womanly.' In 
remarks upon persons and their performances, she 
was free and discriminating. Herein it was perhaps 
less habitual for her to use restraint, than it was with 
Alice. The latter was carefully, conscientiously just 
and generous. She was content only to give full credit 



214 ALICE AND PHCEBE GARY. 

for whatever was commendable in others, or in what 
they accomplished. 

" Our removal from town, and other interferences, 
interrupted this acquaintance, until, one spring day 
some five or six years ago, I chanced to meet Phoebe 
in a store, on the quest of shopping, like myself. We 
exchanged warm greetings, talked perhaps for five 
minutes ; but instead of the usual formulas, her words 
were so fresh and piquant that I recall them even 
now. I mentioned the fact of my father's being pastor 
of a Methodist church at Mamaroneck. ' I don't 
belong among the -Methodists,' said Phoebe, in her 
reply, ' but whenever I feel my heart getting chilly, I 
go to a meeting of your people, — any kind of a meet- 
ing. Their warmth is genuine and irresistible. It is 
contagious, too, and has crept inside other walls than 
your own.' 

" When I asked her to visit us, she answered in her 
ready way: 'Well, if you will, I will come to-morrow. 
Alice is away, and I can leave now, better than when 
she comes back.' 

"Yes, Alice was away. I discovered afterward that 
this cheery "soul, who could sing songs, get books into 
market, and whose plenitude of spirits was apparently 
unfailing, whose very gait, at once smooth and rapid, 
expressed swift and direct force, this hearty, happy 
woman, pined somewhat when severed from her mate. 
In the stillness of the house her gayety drooped, and 
she had no one to think of. The tender curves of her 
mouth, the arch of her eyelids, something round and 
child-like in the whole contour, betokened this depend- 
ence of affection in her. 

" She came to us on the morrow, told numberless 



MRS. ROBINSON 'S LE TTER, 2 1 5 

stories and jests, talked with her habitual earnestness, 
bordering on vehemence when the conversation turned 
on spiritualism (apologizing afterward, fearing she 
had ' forgotten herself), and seemed heartily to enjoy 
everything connected with her visit. We were all 
comfortable in her presence, and utterly ignored that 
slight constraint one often experiences along with the 
pleasure of having a guest in the house. . The second 
day was rainy, so she could not ride out, as we had 
planned, to see the scenes of the neighborhood. But 
she fell to discoursing on the charms of a wet day in 
a country house, the fresh, growing verdure without, 
the open fire, the friendly aspect of a library, the con- 
verse on men, women, and books, till we ceased to 
regret the weather, and congratulated ourselves silently 
through the day, saying, ' What a happy time, what a 
charming rainy day we are having ! ' • 

" In the course of conversation some one remarked 
her resemblance to Sappho, as she is known to us by 
the bust, and by descriptions ; the olive-brown tint, the 
stature rather under size, the low brow, etc. -Phoebe 
accepted the comparison smilingly, in silence, but with 
a natural, modest pleasure. She won the favor of a 
child, the only one in the family. He wanted a poem, 
but dared not ask for it. Later, when- the request 
reached her ears, she sent him some simple, character- 
istic verses upon himself. 

" During this visit, as often afterward, I could but 
note the rapid movement of her mind. She thought 
quickly, spoke quickly ; never chattering nonsense, nor 
filling spaces of conversation with phrases, but always 
racy, healthful utterances, full of sense, wit, and vigor. 
Her natural simplicity never forsook her ; something of 



2l6 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

rural life, of virgin soil, the clear breeziness of Western 
plains was suggested by her character, as manifested 
in speech, aspect, and manner. 

" After this visit I did not see her again till the day 
of Alice's funeral. There, her extreme but restrained 
grief touched my heart ; for Death had entered my own 
door, and borne away my best-beloved. When she 
turned from her last look at her sister's face, and was 
supported by friends to her seat, it was plain that this 
bereavement had taken hold of the roots of her life, 
had drowned its bases in tears. I sent a note of sym- 
pathy, not wishing to intrude upon her sorrow. But 
some weeks later, hearing that she was much alone, 
and needed society, I called one evening, and continued 
my visits weekly and finally daily, up to her last depart- 
ure from town. In some measure, she recovered her 
natural flow of spirits. Once, speaking of the Franco- 
German war, I said that the French more than any 
other nation were tainted with the virus of Roman 
corruption, as evident in the latter (Roman) empire, 
instancing their epicurism, sensuality, cruelty, ostenta- 
tion, luxury, etc. 

" ' I see,' said Phoebe, ' you think they are still in 
the gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity.' 

" She liked to talk of love and marriage, though 
entirely reticent of her own affaires du cozur ; and she 
was not without them. On those subjects she spoke 
with a woman's heart, and conceived the noblest ideals 
of them. 

iC i Whenever I write a story, often when only a 
poem,' she said once, ' it must turn upon love.' 

" One evening, the first birthday of Alice after her 
death, I made one of a tea party of four at the little 



MRS. ROBINSON'S LETTER. 217 

house where so many guests had been so charmingly en- 
tertained. An elderly widow, Mrs. C , who stayed 

with Phoebe after Alice's death, an old friend, Miss 

Mary B , Phoebe, and myself surrounded the table. 

The snug dining-room, the old-fashioned tea-service, 
the quaint china, the light biscuit, sweet butter, all the 
dishes comme il faut, everything bespeaking a carefully- 
ordered domestic life — I am sure you can recall sim- 
ilar evenings full of the same delightful impressions. 
We had jellied chicken that Phoebe had tried for the 
first time, for the occasion, and with entire success. We 
gossiped over our fragrant tea, and smiled at ourselves, 
a gathering of lone women ; and all agreed that the 
hostess was less like an old maid than any of the others. 
Cheerful she was, in truth, much like her natural self; 

yet in the evening, sitting apart with Miss B , she 

confessed that the absence of Alice affected her seri- 
ously ; that when she tried to write, no words would 
come ) that failing here, she turned to household affairs, 
but could scarcely accomplish anything. Every morning 
her first thought on waking was, l Here is another 
leaden day to get through with \ it will be precisely like 
yesterday, and such will be all days in all time to 
come ! ' 

" Plainly the watching and anxiety of the previous 
year had jarred her nerves. They were firmly set by 
nature, but through her illness their attenuation became 
extremely painful ; they grew sharp and fine as the 
worn strings of an instrument ; it was as if one could 
see them stretched too long, and too tensely — about 
to snap, as they did, indeed, at last. 

"One Wednesday afternoon I stopped at the door, 
and hearing that she was lying down, I simply left a 



2l8 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

bouquet with my love. When next I called, she entered 
the room with a poem about my flowers, the last verses 
she ever wrote, about the last paper that she touched 
with a pen. It seems that on the day of my former 
call she had given the morning to a memorial article 
of Alice *(for the c Ladies Repository' of Boston) and 
being quite worn out when it was done, lay down to 
rest. My flowers were brought freshly-cut, moistened 
by some drops of a spring shower, and set on a stand 
by her lounge. She looked at them a few minutes, 

rose quickly, ' as if quite rested,' Mrs. C said, was 

gone about twenty minutes in the opposite room, and 
returned with this pretty resolution of thanks. 

" Shortly afterward we attended the anniversary of 
one of the Woman Suffrage Societies, where we heard 
Mrs. Livermore, Grace Greenwood, Dr. Eggleston, 
Mrs. Howe, Lucy Stone, and others. Miss Cary's 
interest in the movement was strong, and her remarks 
on the speakers just, and admirably to the point. She 
was then apparently as well and as cheerful as usual. 

" The following Sunday she passed in New Jersey, 
with her friends, Mrs. Victor and Mrs. Rayl. On her 
return, Monday, she was seized with a chill, which 
recurred more or less regularly for upwards of three 
weeks. They were extremely severe ; the suffering 
and exhaustion, for the time, were like those of death 
itself. Her appetite grew capricious, and soon failed 
altogether. We tried to tempt it by following her fan- 
cies ; but as soon as a new dish or drink was brought, 
she ceased to care for it. A stomachic cough con- 
nected with a derangement of the liver, that was com- 
mon to the entire family, and imperfect sleep, combined 
to undermine her strength. She suffered no pain, but 



MRS. ROBINSON'S LETTER. 219 

an appalling misery, attended with extreme depression 
of spirits. She lamented often her lonely and forlorn 
condition, and said her illness was ' quite as much in 
the mind as in the body.' This however, was an 
attendant symptom of her malady. 

"After seeing her at the time of Alice's funeral, 
most of her friends were too busy in the affairs of 
spring, etc., to make visits ; and she had been ill for 
several weeks, before any of them knew of her afflic- 
tion. I visited her daily, answered her correspon- 
dence, read much aloud, laughed, and chatted ; did 
anything I could to alleviate the mortal weariness 
that had come over her. She confessed to no confi- 
dence in any medical aid. Invalids had not been 
wanting in the family ; and no physician or medicine 
had availed for them. She thought that when they 
were so ill as to need the regular visits of a physician, 
they were subjects for death. Occasionally the old 
vigor would shine forth for a day ; but it was sure to 
be followed by a relapse. 

" On one of these better evenings, her friends, Miss 
Mary L. Booth and Mrs. Wright, called to see her. 
She lay on her lounge, and talked with much of her 
former vivacity ; recounted an accident that had hap- 
pened some nights previously. Feeling restless and 
feverish, she had risen in the dark and made her way 
to the bath-room, wishing to bathe her head. In the 
dark she fell, hit her head against a chair with such 
force as to cut it, fainted, and lay insensible till re- 
stored to consciousness by the air from an open win- 
dow. She then crept back to her couch, and was 
found quite exhausted in the morning. This serious 
accident she related with all the lightness it would 
admit, and actually made sport of some of the details. 



220 A MCE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

" * You have read in sensation stories of heroines 
weltering in their gore/ she said ; ' I understand now 
exactly what that means, for I lay and weltered in my 
gore for the best of the night, and it was a very dis- 
agreeable proceeding : I never want to welter again.' 

"As her strength declined each day instead of 
mending, she was possessed of a desire to go away, 
and was persuaded that an entire change would be of 
benefit. But in her invalid state she was unwilling 
to impose herself on any of her friends. Finally we 
persuaded her to accept a very cordial invitation from 
Mrs. H. O. Houghton of Cambridge, Mass., wife of 
Mr. Houghton, the publisher. Preparations were 
made for the journey ; but on the day appointed for 
it, she was too ill to be moved from her room,, and 
the plan was abandoned. 

" We then considered several places, deciding at 
last upon Newport, as offering homelike quarters, 
with two single ladies, sisters, of a Quaker family with 
whom I was acquainted. It was arranged for Mr. 
Jenckes (of Providence) and Mrs. Rayl to escort her 
thither, while I was to follow a fortnight later. The 
journey taxed her severely, and prostrated her to 
such an extent for some days after her arrival, that her 
life was despaired of. The air, that we hoped would 
prove medicinal, was thought to be too strong for her 
shattered frame, though the house stands a mile from 
the sea. Whether it was too strong or not, I cannot 
tell ; she herself chose it in preference to mountain 
air ; but she sank steadily after reaching Newport, and 
was too feeble to bear removal. She had been for 
nearly three months without regular or healthful rest. 
She ate and drank almost nothing, could not lie down, 



MRS. ROBINSOiV'S LETTER. 221 

but sat most of the time in a chair, leaning forward, 
supported on pillows, or was propped up in the bed. 
From dawn till eight or nine o'clock she was in the 
sharpest misery \ for the rest she sat with closed eyes 
in a semi-stupor, from which she would arouse when 
addressed. 

" Reading and conversation were given over. But 
one day I found Mr. Whittier's poem on Alice, in 
'The Atlantic/ 'The Singer/ and read it at her re- 
quest. When I had half done I paused, thinking she 
had fallen asleep ; but she lifted her eyes, and asked 
why I did not go on. 'It was all one could wish or 
ask for,' she said, on hearing it to the close, 

"Such nursing as she required was very simple. 
To fan away the flies, give the medicine at regular 
hours, change her position frequently, lift her from the 
chair to the bed and back again, and bathe her swol- 
len feet in salt water ; this was nearly all that could be 
done. Of food and drink she took very little, and that 
mainly cold milk, beef tea, or iced claret. Some two 
or three times the doctor's prescriptions were too pow- 
erful for her exhausted frame, and caused severe pain, 
accompanied with delirium. She would then rave at 
Maria and myself, upbraiding us as the cause of her 
sufferings \ but the frenzy past, she was gentle and 
sweet, like her usual self. One evening, in a paroxysm 
of this sort, she begged to be laid on the floor, and 
after expostulating in vain, we spread a quilt down, and 
laid her on it. Here she remained for above two 
hours, I standing over her, and by slow degrees lift- 
ing her back to the bed. But these sad aberrations 
were not frequent nor lasting. They ceased with the 
harmful medicines. 



2 22 ALICE AND FHCEBE CARY. 

" Many persons in Newport, learning of her illness, 
called to leave their condolences ; among others, Mr. 
Higginson, and Mrs. Parton. Her friend Oliver 
Johnson called twice, and though almost too weak 
to speak, she saw him both times. The first was on 
Saturday, when he promised to call again the next 
day. The tears rolled down his face as he beheld her 
altered aspect ; her reception of him was most affec- 
tionate. On Sunday evening she seemed quite im- 
proved ; told the doctor she believed she had begun 
to get well, and wanted to be all dressed for Mr. John- 
son's call : but for that preparation she was not equal. 
I had not been out for some time, therefore went to 
church in the morning, leaving her with Maria. On 
my return I found her still comfortable, though ex- 
tremely restless, wishing to be moved every five or ten 
minutes. ' Don't mind if you pull me limb from limb/ 
she said quite placidly. 'Pull me about,' was her con- 
stant request. I repeated much of the sermon, and she 
commented on it in her naturally rapid manner. All 
this day she was more or less talkative. She saw Mr. 
Johnson, who left with her a nosegay of sweet-peas of 
rare varieties. Their odor was that of sweet apples, 
and this I spoke of. * Who said anything of sweet ap- 
ples ? ' she asked, lifting her eyes. When I made the 
comparison again, she buried her face repeatedly in the 
flowers, crushing them in her strong desire to extract 
their fragrance. She thought she would like a sweet 
apple, but, when it was brought, could only smell of it. 
That afternoon, sitting on the edge of the bed, she 
kissed and caressed Maria, talked of how they would 
go home, went over pleasantly every detail of the an- 
ticipated journey as a child would talk of it, and 



MRS. ROBIA T SOA n S LETTER. 223 

seemed altogether so tranquil and comfortable that 
any one unaware of her low state might have hoped 
for convalescence. But we could entertain no such 
hope. 

" The restlessness increased all the next day, though 
in other respects she remained comfortable. Several 
times I lifted her alone from the chair to the bed, though 
how, I can hardly tell now. It was something I could 
do better than the others, for they invariably hurt her ; 
but generally Maria helped me. In the evening her 
restlessness increased, so that she could not lie still a 
moment. I was quite worn out, and for the first time, 
went early to a little room on the floor above, leaving 
a written report for the doctor, who generally called at 
eleven. I noticed when I went up-stairs that the moon 
was shining, and that all was perfectly still ; not so 
much as a leaf was stirring. I lay quiet, but awake ; 
heard the doctor enter, and go into her room. 

" Suddenly a gust of wind wailed through the house, 
and blew my door shut. A moment after I heard 
Phoebe's voice in a faint, but piercing cry, and some 
one came up for me. I was two or three minutes in 
putting on a wrapper, etc., in the room adjoining hers, 
but all was still in there. When I entered, her eyes 
were closed, and the repose of death was settling on 
her brow. The death throe had seized her, but it 
lasted for a moment only, and for this I gave thanks 
even at that hour, for she had such fear of pain ; and 
though she suffered much, yet of actual pain she had 
but little from the beginning to this last hour. This 
was mercifully ordered, in view of her peculiar inability 
to bear acute suffering. After death, her face, almost 
immediately, wore a tranquil smile — a smile as through 



224 ALICE AND PH(EBE CARY. 

tears, of sunlight shining through rain ; and though 
I saw it no more after the last offices of the hour were 
rendered, I was told that till the coffin-lid closed finally 
upon it, this repose remained stamped there. Thus 
passed away one of the dearest souls that God ever set 
on the earth." 

Maria's story of that hour which she spent alone 
with Phoebe, Phoebe's last hour in this world, is most 
touching. " She could not lie down, but she was so 
restless," said Maria ; " she kept saying to me, ' Maria, 

put my hair back. There ! — that is just as 's 

hand used to feel on my forehead — so gentle. And 
to think that you and I are in the world alone — that 
after all, I've nobody but you, Maria ! Everybody else 
gone so far away. Where are my friends? Well, 
when we go back we won't live alone any longer, will 
we ? We won't live alone as we did last spring. We'll 
open the house and fill it, won't we, Maria.' .... 
'But if you go back, and I don't know, don't let me 
look ugly to my friends ; go out and buy me a white 
dress. All my life I've wanted to wear a white dress, 
and I never could, because I was so dark. I think I 
could wear one then. Put it on me yourself, Maria, 
and cover me all over with flowers, so I shall not 
look gloomy and dreadful to anybody who looks on me 
for the last time.' " 

Thus she talked, one moment as if they were going 
back to life and the old home on Twentieth Street, with 
uttered yearnings for friends, and an outreaching to- 
ward a mortal future full of sunshine and human com- 
panionship ; the next, speaking as if her death were 
certain, the feminine instinct of decoration, the longing 
to look pleasant to those she loved, sirong even in dis- 
solution. 



PHCEBE CARY'S DEATH. 225 

The loving heart was mightier than all. She would 
suddenly stop her low, rapid utterances, and stretching 
out her arms throw them around Maria's neck, cov- 
ering her face with caresses and kisses, ending always 
with the words : " You and I are all alone, Maria. 
After all j I've nobody but you /" bestowing upon her in 
that moment some of her most precious personal treas- 
ures. 

Without an instant's warning the death throe came. 
She knew it. Throwing up her arms in instinctive 
fright, this loving, believing, but timid soul, who had 
never stood alone in all her mortal life, as she felt her- 
self drifting out into the unknown, the eternal, starting 
on the awful passage frbm whence there is no return 
cried, in a low, piercing voice, " O God, have mercy on 
my soul ! " and died. 

She had her wish. The white robe that she had so 
longed all her life to wear^ fell in fleecy folds about her 
in death. She slept amid flowers, fresh and fragrant. 
The tender heart whose depth of affection had never 
been fully seen or feLt within its outward shield of re- 
splendent wit, now shone through and transfigured 
every feature. Every lineament was smiling, childlike, 
loving. She had her wish. No look on the living 
face of Phoebe Cary was ever so sweet as the last. 

Phoebe Cary died at Newport, Rhode Island, Mon- 
day, July 31, 187 1. Her body was brought to the 
empty house on Twentieth Street, New York, and from 
thence was taken for funeral services to All Souls 
Church, corner of Fourth Avenue and Twentieth Street, 
whose congregation, coming and going, Phoebe had so 
often watched from her chamber window, with emotions 
of affection. Her funeral was attended by her four 
15 



226 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

nieces, by the few of her many friends at that time left 
in the heated city, and by a goodly company of stran- 
gers to whom her name was dear. The services were 
intrusted to the Rev. A. G. Laurie, a Scottish Univer- 
salist clergyman, and Rev. Bernard Peters, both old 
and dear friends of the Cary family, the former having 
known Phoebe from childhood. The " New York 
Tribune," speaking of the solemnities, said : — 

" The body was placed in the centre aisle, near the 
chancel, the organ playing a dirge. When the attend- 
ants had arranged the final details, and the last strains 
of music were dying away, a cloud that had obscured 
the sun passed from before it, and the whole church 
was illumined by soft, golden tints, seemingly indicative 
of the glory which awaited the peaceful spirit that had 
so recently passed away." 

At the conclusion of Mr. Laurie's affectionate and 
tearful address, he read Phoebe's hymn, " Nearer 
Home," which was sung by the choir, who also sang 
the following hymn, written by the officiating clergy- 
man : — 

O stricken heart, what spell shall move thee, 

What charm shall lift that grief away, 
Which, like a leaden mist above thee, 

Shuts out the shining of the day ? 

Is out of sight the friend unto thee 

'Fore every friend that sat the first ? 
Let not her silence thus undo thee ; 

The blank of Death is not its worst. 

And never shade of wrong lay on her ; 

She loved her kith, her kind, her God, 
And from her mind returned the Donor 

Rich harvest for the seed He sowed. 



THE FUNERAL. 227 

She died in stress of love and duty, 
On others spent her work and will ; 

Unself — O, Christ, thy chiefest beauty 
Was hers, and she is with Thee still. 

Then, smitten heart, renew thy gladness : 

Rejoice that thou canst not forget ; 
In every pulse, with solemn sadness, 

Unseen, but present, feel her yet." 

Horace Greeley and others went as far as they could 
with this dear friend on her long journey. When they 
saw all that was mortal of this last sister of her race 
laid in Greenwood, and turned back to her empty 
house, they realized with unspoken sorrow that its last 
light had gone out, and that the home in Twentieth 
Street was left desolate forever. 



223 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE SISTERS COMPARED. — THEIR LAST RESTING-PLACE. 

It is impossible to estimate either sister without any 
reference to the other, — as impossible as to tell what a 
husband and wife, modifed in habit and character by 
many years of wedded life, would have been had they 
never lived together. 

Alice Cary was remarkable for the fullness and ten- 
derness of her emotional nature, and for the depth and 
fidelity of her affections ; through these she was all soft- 
ness and gentleness. But mentally she was a strong 
woman — strong in will, energy, industry, and patience ; 
through these she faced fate with a masculine strength 
of courage and endurance. It was not easy, but her 
will was strong enough to compel her life to do noble 
service. 

Phoebe, mentally and emotionally, was in every attri- 
bute essentially feminine. The terror of her mortal 
life was responsibility. It seemed absolutely necessary 
to her existence to know that somebody stood between 
her and all the inexorable demands and exigencies of 
this world. " I believe a consciousness of responsi- 
bility could kill Phoebe, even if she were in perfect 
health," said Alice. " She does not wish to feel respon- 
sibility for anything, not even for the saving of her 
own soul ; for that reason alone she would be a Roman 



THE CARY SISTERS. 229- 

Catholic if she could, and lay the whole burden of her 
salvation on the Church. Unfortunately for her com- 
fort, the literalness of her mind makes that impossi- 
ble." 

Alice Cary was preeminently, and in the highest 
and finest sense, an attractive woman. She was 
beloved of women. Young girls were drawn toward 
her in a sort of idolatry, and she was universally 
beloved of men. No man could come within the 
sphere of her presence without feeling all that was 
most tender, chivalric, and true in his manhood, in- 
stinctively going forth toward the woman by his side. 
It was the fine potent power of her femininity, her gen- 
tleness, and sincerity, her tenderness and purity, which 
inspired all that was most tender and reverent in him. 
This feeling of sacred affection for Alice Cary was felt 
by all men who were her friends, no matter how 
various or conflicting their tastes might be in other 
things. When the loveliness of her face was not that 
of youth, there were artists who used to go to her 
house Sabbath evening after Sabbath evening, "just 
to look upon her face." Said one, " It grows more 
beautiful every year." 

Alice was tall and graceful, with a suggestion of 
majesty in her simple mien. Her dark eyes were .of 
a wonderful softness and beauty, with a fathomless 
depth of tenderness in their expression, which men and 
even women love. Yet there were not wanting lines 
of firmness and energy about the feminine mouth, and 
there was an impression of silent power pervading her 
very gentleness. Phoebe had all the soft contours, 
the complexion, hair, and eyes, of a Spanish woman. 
And with her sparkle and repartee she had besides a 



230 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

Spaniard's languors. She was slightly below ordinary 
height \ full, without being heavy in outline. The pre- 
vailing expression of Alice's countenance was one 
of sadness, pervaded with extreme sweetness; but 
Phoebe's black eyes sparkled as she talked, and even 
when her face was in repose there was upon it the trace 
of a smile. Alice dressed with rich simplicity, and in 
the most resplendent drawing-room would have been 
noticed as one of the most elegant women in it. 
Phoebe, in her more animated moments, would have 
been marked for her dark, brilliant beauty, and would 
have reminded you of an Oriental princess in the warm 
brightness of her colors, and the distinctive character 
of her ornaments. 

The mental contrasts of the sisters were as marked 
as their physical. Alike in tastes and aspiration, they 
were unlike in temperament, in their habit of thought 
and of action. Each, in her own way, out of her own 
life, sacrificed much to the other, — how much only 
God and their own souls knew. Out of this mutual 
sacrifice was welded a bond stronger and closer than 
many sisters know ; through their life-long association, 
their sympathy, their very sisterhood, it drew them 
nearer and nearer together to the end. It produced at 
last an identification of existence such as we see where 
the natures of husband and wife have become perfectly 
assimilated because their life and fate are one. 

Notwithstanding the unity of their pursuits, the 
identity of their interests, their utter devotion to .each 
other, outside of this dual life each sister lived dis- 
tinctly and separately her own existence. Each 
respected absolutely the personal peculiarities of the 
other, and never consciously intruded upon thenx 



THE CAR Y SISTERS, 231 

Each thought and wrought in as absolute solitude as 
if she alone were in the house. The results of the 
labor they shared together \ but not the labor. Each 
respected so much the idiosyncrasies of the other's 
mind, that neither ever thought of criticising the other's 
work. If one offered a suggestion, it was because the 
other requested her to do so. 

Both had ways that at times were not altogether 
satisfactory to the other. Each accepted them as a 
part of the cross that she must bear for her sister, and 
slip did not complain, nor did it cause any bitterness. 
For example, Alice's tireless energy and unswerving 
will at times wearied Phoebe, though she found in both 
the staff and support of her life, while Phoebe's 
inertia was a much more perpetual trial to Alice. She 
recognized the fact that she could not make the active 
law of her own being that of Phoebe's, and acquiesced, 
but not always with inward resignation, 
• According to Phoebe's own testimony, Alice used 
mind and body unsparingly whenever she could com- 
pel them to obey her will. With all a woman's soft- 
ness, she met the responsibilities of life as a man meets 
them. She never stopped to inquire whether she felt 
like doing a task, no matter how disagreeable it might 
be. If it was to be done she did it, and without words 
and without delay. 

It was Phoebe, the protected and sheltered one, who 
consulted her moods. Perhaps this was scarcely a 
fault ; she obeyed the law of her being and the law of 
her life in this. Had she compelled her powers to 
produce a given amount of work, as Alice did, without 
doubt it would proportionately have depreciated in 
quality. Absolute necessity did not force her to such 



232 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

toil, therefore she instinctively avoided it. Beside, 
a most touching humility always held her back from 
testing her powers to the utmost. 

The same self-depreciation was strong in Alice ; 
but her aspiration, her will to do her best, with the 
impelling demands of life, were so much stronger, 
that neither brain nor hand were ever for a moment 
idle. She placed the highest estimate on Phoebe's 
brilliant wit, clear vision, and apt and shrewd sugges- 
tiveness, as well as on her poetical genius. The 
former, especially, she thought a mine unworked, a#d 
for years urged and encouraged Phoebe to test the 
growing opportunities of correspondence of critical 
and editorial writing which journalism opened to 
women. But Phoebe was not to be persuaded even by 
the necessities of the occasion, or the eloquence of 
her sister. She continued to coruscate in the little 
parlor, to fill the air with the flashes of a most ex- 
quisite wit, but she never turned it to any material 
account. When a song came singing through her 
brain, she would leave her sewing, or her novel, and 
go and write it down. Yet for a period of eight years 
she wrote comparatively nothing. In referring to this 
period she often said : "I thought that I should never 
write again. I had nothing to say, and felt an unut- 
terable heaviness. If I did write anything it did not 
seem to me worth copying, much less reading." The 
causes of this mental barrenness were probably purely 
physical and temperamental. It is doubtful if in any 
effective degree it was in her power to help it. 

No less those were years in which the burden of 
life weighed sorely and heavily on Alice. Often she 
felt herself stagger under the weights of life. She felt 



THE CARY SISTERS. 233 

her strength failing. No less she knew that she must 
carry them alone, that there was no one on earth to 
help her. Phoebe outlived that period of mental in- 
activity. The war seemed to arouse and quicken all 
her nature. For the last five years of her life her 
genius was almost as productive as that of Alice. Her 
very best poems, with a few exceptions, were written 
within that period. To the delight of her friends and 
the joy of her sister, her powers seemed continually to 
increase, her song to grow sweeter and fuller to the 
end. Had she lived ten years longer, without a doubt 
she would have risen to a height never attained by her 
before. Believing her sister always with her, it would 
have been as if the song of Alice was added to her own. 

Through nearly all their lives Phoebe had materially, 
intellectually, and spiritually depended upon Alice. 
Though Phoebe had the more robust health, it was 
Alice who had the more resolute spirit. Over all the 
long and toilsome road from poverty to competence, it 
was Phoebe who leaned on Alice. It was Alice who 
bore the burden and heat of the day, and who smoothed 
the paths for her sister's feet. Not that she was idle, 
and did nothing ; but she paused, and doubted, and 
waited by the way. Tears dimmed the lovely eyes of 
the elder, how often ; pain and weariness would have 
stayed her steps, but her high heart said, " Nay." Ne- 
cessity said, " You must not ! " She went on, she led 
her sister on, till they came to a height where both 
stood side by side. Then, the painful journey done, in 
the evening shadow it was Alice who leaned on Phoebe, 
and leaning thus, she died. 

But Phoebe lived through and for Alice so long, when 
she looked and saw her no more, the very impulse and 



234 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

power to live were gone. She sank and died, because 
she could not live on, in a world where her sister was 
not. 

Turning to the right, after entering Greenwood, a 
short walk brings you to an embowered slope, crowned 
by a grassy lot, on whose lowly gate is inscribed the 
one word : " Cary.' , 

Within, side by side, are three mounds, of equal 
length, unmarked save by one low head-stone, whose 
velvet turf holds a few withering flowers, the only token 
of the loving remembrance of the living for the sleepers 
who rest below. Elmina, Phoebe, and Alice ! names 
precious to womanhood, names worthy of the tender- 
est love of the highest manhood. Far from their kin- 
dred, here these sisters three sleep at last together. 
Here the pilgrim feet are stayed. Here the eager 
brains and tireless hands at last are idle. Here the 
passionate, tender, yearning hearts are forever still. 
On one side you hear the murmur and moan of the 
great metropolis, the turmoil and anguish of human 
life never stilled. On the other, Ocean chants a per- 
petual requiem. As you listen, you are sure that it 
holds that in its call which is eternal ; sure that there 
is .that in you which can never end ; sure that the love, 
and devotion, and divine intelligence of the women 
whom you mourn, still survive ; that they whom you 
loved in all the infirmity of their human state, await 
you now, redeemed, and glorified, and immortal. 

The autumn leaves fall on their graves in tender 
showers. The spring leaves, the summer flowers, bud 
and bloom around them in beauty ever renewed. The 
air is penetrated with sunshine and with song. The 
place is full of the brightness that Phoebe loved, full 



WHITTIEFTS VERSES. 235 

of the soothing shade and peace so dear to Elmina, and 
Mice. 

Farewell, beloved trinity ! 

The words which Whittier wrote for Alice, this hour 
belong alike to each one : 

" God giveth quietness at last ! 
The common way that all have passed 
She went, with mortal yearnings fond, 
To fuller life and love beyond. 

" Fold the rapt soul in your embrace, 
My dear ones ! Give the singer place. 
To you, to her — I know not where — 
I lift the silence of a prayer. 

" For only thus our own tve find ; 
The gone before, the left behind, 
All mortal voices die between ; 
The unheard reaches the unseen. 

" Again the blackbirds sing : the streams 
Wake, laughing, from their winter dreams, 
And tremble in the April showers 
The tassels of the maple flowers. 

" But not for her has spring renewed 
The sweet surprises of the wood ; 
And bird and flowers are lost to her 
Who was their best interpreter ! 

" What to shut eyes has God revealed ? 
What hear the ears that death had sealed ? 
What undreamed beauty, passing show, 
Requites the loss of all we know ? 

" O silent land, to which we move, 
Enough if there alone be love ; 
And mortal need can ne'er outgrow 
What it is waiting to bestow ! 



236 ALICE AND PHCEBE CARY. 

" O white soul ! from that far-off shore 
Float some sweet song the waters o'er ; 
Our faith confirm, our fears dispel, 
With the old voice we loved so well ! " 

In the days of her early youth Phoebe wrote : — 

" Let your warm hands chill not, slipping 

From my fingers' icy tips ; 
Be there not the touch of kisses 

On my uncaressing lips ; 
Let no kindness see the blindness 

Of my eyes' last, long eclipse. 
Never think of me as lying 

By the dismal mould o'erspread : 
But about the soft white pillow 

Folded underneath my head, 
And of summer flowers weaving 

Their rich broidery o'er my bed. 
Think of the immortal spirit 

Living up above the sky, 
And of how my face is wearing 

Light of immortality ; 
Looking earthward, is o'erleaning 

The white bastion of the sky." 



LATER POEMS BY ALICE V CARY. 



BALLADS AND LOVE SONGS. 



THE MIGHT OF LOVE. 

" There is work, good man, for you to-day ! " 

So the wife of Jamie cried, 
" For a ship at Garl'ston, on Sol way, 
Is beached, and her coal's to be got away 
At the ebbing time of tide." 

"And, lassie, would you have me start, 
And make for Solway sands ? 
You know that I, for my poor part, 
To help me, have nor horse nor cart — 
I have only just my hands ! " 

"But, Jamie, be not, till ye try, 

Of honest chances baulked ; 
For, mind ye, man, I'll prophesy 
That while the old ship's high and dry 
Her master'll have her caulked." 

And far and near the men were pressed, 
As the wife saw in her dreams. 
" Aye," Jamie said, " she knew the best," 
As he went under with the rest 
To caulk the open seams. 



240 BALLADS AND LOVE SONGS. 

And while the outward-flowing tide 

Moaned like a dirge of woe, 
The ship's mate from the beach belt cried : 
" Her hull is heeling toward the side 

Where the men are at work below ! " 

And the cartmen, wild and open-eyed, 

Made for the Solway sands — 
Men heaving men like coals aside, 
For now it was the master cried : 

" Run for your lives, all hands ! " 

Like dead leaves in the sudden swell 

Of the storm, upon that shout, 
Brown hands went fluttering up and fell, 
As, grazed by the sinking planks, pell mell 
The men came hurtling out ! 

Thank God, thank God, the peril's past ! 

" No ! no ! " with blanching lip, 
The master cries. " One man, the last, 
Is caught, drawn in, and grappled fast 
Betwixt the sands and the ship ! " 

" Back, back, all hands ! Get what you can — 

Or pick, or oar, or stave." 
This way and that they breathless ran, 
And came and fell to, every man, 

To dig him out of his grave ! 

" Too slow ! too slow ! The weight will kill ! 
Up, make your hawsers fast ! " 
Then every man took hold with a will — 



« 
THE MIGHT OF LOVE. 241 

A long pull and a strong pull — still 
With never a stir o' th' mast ! 

" Out with the cargo ! " Then they go 

At it with might and main. 
" Back to the sands ! too slow, too slow ! 
He's dying, dying ! yet, heave ho ! 
Heave ho ! there, once again ! " 

And now on the beach at Garl'ston stood 

A woman whose pale brow wore 
Its love like a queenly crown \ and the blood 
Ran curdled and cold as she watched the flood 

That was racing in to the shore. 

On, on it trampled, stride by stride. 

It was death to stand and wait ; 
And all that were free threw picks aside, 
And came up dripping out o' th' tide, 

And left the doomed to his fate. 
* 

But lo ! the great sea trembling stands ; 

Then, crawling under the ship, 
As if for the sake of the two white hands 
Reaching over the wild, wet sands, 

Slackened that terrible grip. 

" Come to me, Jamie ! God grants the way," - 
She cries, " for lovers to meet." 
And the sea, so cruel, grew kind, they say, 
And, wrapping him tenderly round with spray, 
Laid him dead at her feet. 
16 



242 BALLADS AND LOVE SONGS. 



"THE GRACE WIFE OF KEITH." 

No whit is gained, do you say; to me, 
In a hundred years, nor in two nor three, 

In wise things, nor in holy — 
No whit since Bacon trod his ways, 
And William Shakespeare wrote his plays I 

Aye, aye, the world moves slowly. 

But here is a lesson, man, to heed ; 

I have marked the pages, open and read ; 

We are yet enough unloving, 
Given to evil and prone to fall, 
But the record will show you, after all, 

That still the world keeps moving. 

All in the times of the good King James — 

I have marked the deeds and their doers' names, 

And over my pencil drawing — 
One Geillis Duncan standeth the first 
For helping of " anie kinde sick " accursed, 

And doomed, without trial, to " thrawing" 

Read of her torturers given their scope 

Of wrenching and binding her head with a rope, 

Of taunting her word and her honor, 
And of searching her body sae pure and fair 
From the lady-white feet to the gouden hair 

For the wizard's mark upon her ! 

Of how through fair coaxings and agonies' dread 
She came to acknowledge whatever they said, 



"THE GRACE WIFE OF KEITH." 243 

And, lastly, her shaken wits losing, 
To prattle from nonsense and blasphemies wild 
To the silly entreaties and tears of a child, 

And then to the fatal accusing. 

First naming Euphemia Macalzean, 
A lord's young daughter, and fair as a queen ; 
Then Agnes, whose wisdom surpassed her ; 
" Grace Wyff of Keith," so her sentence lies, 
" Adjudged at Holyrood under the eyes 
Of the King, her royal master." 

O, think of this Grace wife, fine and tall, 
With a witch's bridle tied to the wall ! 

Her peril and pain enhancing 
With owning the lie that on Hallowmas Eve 
She with a witch crew sailed in a sieve 

To Berwick Church, for a dancing ! 
♦ 

Think of her owning, through brainsick fright, 
How Geillis a Jew's-harp played that night, 

And of Majesty sending speedy 
Across the border and far away 
For that same Geillis to dance and play, 

Of infernal news made greedy ! 

Think of her true tongue made to tell 
How she had raised a dog from a well 

To conjure a Lady's daughters ; 
And how she had gript him neck and skin, 
And, growling, thrust him down and in 

To his hiding under the waters ! 



244 BALLADS AND LOVE SONGS. 

How Rob the Rower, so stout and brave, 
Helped her rifle a dead man's grave, 

And how, with enchantments arming, 
Husbands false she had put in chains, 
And gone to the beds of women in pains 

And brought them through by charming ! 

Think of her owning that out at sea 
The Devil had marked her on the knee, 

And think of the prelates round her 
Twitching backward their old gray hairs 
And bowing themselves to their awful prayers 

Before they took her and bound her ! 

The world moves ! Witch-fires, say what you will, 
Are lighted no more on the Castle Hill 

By the breath of a crazy story ; 
Nor are men riven at horses' tails, 
Or done to death through pincered nails, 

In the name of God and his glory. 

The world moves on ! Say what you can, 
No more may a maiden's love for a man, 

Into scorn and hatred turning, 
Wrap him in rosin stiff and stark, 
And roll him along like a log in its bark 

To the place of fiery burning. 

And such like things were done in the days 
When one Will Shakespeare wrote his plays ; 

And when Bacon thought, for a wonder ; 
And when Luther had hurled, at the spirit's call, 
Inkstand, Bible, himself, and all 

At the head of the Papal thunder. 



JOHNNY RIGHT. 245 



JOHNNY RIGHT. 

Johnny Right, his hand was brown, 
And so was his honest, open face, 

For the sunshine kissed him up and down, 
But Johnny counted all for grace ; 

And when he looked in the glass at night 

He said that brown was as good as white ! 

A little farm our Johnny owned, 

Some pasture-fields, both green "and good, 
A bit of pleasant garden ground, 
A meadow, and a strip of wood. 
" Enough for any man," said John, 
" To earn his livelihood upon ! " 

Two oxen, speckled red and white, 

And a cow that gave him a pail of milk, 
He combed and curried morn and night 
Until their coats were as soft as silk. 
" Cattle on all the hills," said be, 
" Could give no more of joy to me." 

He never thought the world was wrong 
Because rough weather chanced a day ; 
" The night is always hedged along 

With daybreak roses," he would say; 
He did not ask for manna, but said, 
" Give me but strength — I will get the bread ! " 

Kindly he took for good and all 
Whatever fortune chanced to bring, 



246 BALLADS AND LOVE SONGS. 

And he never wished that Spring were Fall, 

And he never wished that Fall were Spring ; 
But set the plough with a joy akin 
To the joy of putting the sickle in. 

He never stopped to sigh " Oho ! " 

Because of the ground he needs must till, 

For he knew right well that a man must sow 
Before he can reap, and he sowed with a will ; 

And still as he went to his rye-straw bed, 
" Work brings the sweetest of rest," he said. 

Johnny's house was little and low, 

And his fare was hard ; and that was why 

He used to say, with his cheeks aglow, 
That he must keep his heart up high: 

Aye, keep it high, and keep it light ! 

He used to say — wise Johnny Right ! 

He never fancied one was two ; 

But according to his strength he planned, 
And oft to his Meggy would say he knew 

That gold was gold, and sand was sand ; 
And that each was good and best in its place, 
For he counted everything for grace. 

Now Meggy Right was Meggy Wrong, 

For things with her went all awry ; 
She always found the day too long 

Or the day too short, and would mope and sigh ; 
For, somehow, the time and place that were, 
Were never the time and place for her ! 



JOHNNY RIGHT. 247 

" O Johnny, Johnny ! " she used to say, 
If she saw a cloud in the sky at morn, 

" There will be a hurricane to-day ; " 

Or, " The rain will come and drench the corn! " 
And Johnny would answer, with a smile, 

" Wait, dear Meggy, wait for a while ! " 

And often before an ear was lost, 

Or a single hope of the harvest gone, 
She would cry, " Suppose there should fall a frost, 

What should we do then, John, O John ! " 
And Johnny would answer, rubbing his thumbs, 
" Wait, dear Meggy, wait till it comes ! " 

But when she saw the first gray hair, 

Her hands together she wrung and wrung, 

And cried, in her wicked and weak despair, 
" Ah, for the day when we both were young ! " 

And Johnny answered, kissing her brow, 
" Then was then, Meg — now is now ! " 

And when he spectacles put on, 

And read at ease the paper through, 

She whimpered, " O, hard-hearted John, 
It isn't the way you used to do ! " 

And Johnny, wiser than wiser men, 

Said, " Now is now, Meg — then was then ! " 

So night and day, with this and that, 

She gave a bitter to all the bliss, 
Now for Johnny to give her a hat. 

And now for Johnny to give her a kiss, 
Till, patience failing, he cried, " Peg, Peg ! 
You're enough to turn a man's head, Meg ! " 



248 BALLADS AND LOVE SONGS. 

O, then she fell into despair — 

No coaxing could her temper mend ; 
* For her part now she didn't care 

How soon her sad life had an end. 
And Johnny, sneering, made reply, 
" Well, Meg, don't die before you die ! " 

Then foolish Meg began to scold, 
And call her Johnny ugly names ; 

She wished the little farm was sold, 
And that she had no household claims, 

So that she might go and starve or beg, 

And Johnny answered, " O Meg, Meg ! " 

Ah, yes, she did — she didn't care ! 

That were a living to prefer ; 
What had she left to save despair ? 

A man that didn't care for her ! 
Indeed, in truth she'd rather go ! 
" Don't, Meg," says Johnny, " don't say so 1 " 

She left his stockings all undarned, 

She set his supper for him cold ; 

And every day she said she yearned 

To have the hateful homestead sold. 
She couldn't live, and wouldn't try ! 
John only answered with a sigh. 

Passing the tavern one cold night, 
Says Johnny, " I've a mind to stop, 

It looks so cheery and so bright 
Within, and take a little drop, 

And then I'll go straight home to Meg." 

There was the serpent in the egg. 



THE LOVER'S INTERDTCT 249 

He stopped, alas, alas for John. 

That careless step foredoomed his fall. 
Next year the little farm was gone, — 

Corn-fields and cattle, house and all ; 
And Meggy learned too late, too late, 
Her own self had evoked her fate. 



THE LOVER'S INTERDICT. 

Stop, traveller, just a moment at my gate, 
And I will give you news so very sweet 
That you will thank me. Where the branches meet 

Across your road, and droop, as with the weight 
Of shadows laid upon them, pause, I pray, 
And turn aside a little from your way. 

You see the drooping branches overspread 
With shadows, as I told you — look you now 
To the high elm-tree with the dead white bough 

Loose swinging out of joint, and there, with head 
Tricked out with scarlet, pouring his wild lay, 
You see a blackbird : turn your step that way. 

Holding along the honeysuckle hedge, 

Make for the meadows lying down so low ; 
Ah ! now I need not say that you must go 

No further than that little silver wedge 
Of daisy-land, pushed inward by the flood 
Betwixt the hills — you could not, if you would. 



250 BALLADS AND LOVE SONGS. 

For you will see there, as the sun goes down, 
And freckles all the daisy leaves with gold, 
A little maiden, in their evening fold 

Penning two lambs — her soft, fawn-colored gown 
Tucked over hems of violet, by a hand 
Dainty as any lady's in the land. 

Such gracious light she will about her bring, 

That, when the Day, being wedded to the shade, 
Wears the moon's circle, blushing, as the maid 

Blushes to wear the unused marriage-ring, 
And all the quickened clouds do fall astir 
With daffodils, your thoughts will stay with her. 

No ornaments but her two sapphire eyes, 
And the twin roses in her cheeks that grow , 
The nice-set pearls, that make so fine a show 

When that she either softly smiles or sighs, 
And the long tresses, colored like a bee — 
Brown, with a sunlight shimmer. You will see, 

When you have ceased to watch the airy spring 
Of her white feet, a fallen beech hard by, 
The yellow earth about the gnarled roots dry, 

And if you hide there, you will hear her sing 
That song Kit Marlowe made so long ago — 
" Come live with me, and be my love," you know. 

Dear soul, you would not be at heaven's high gate 
Among the larks, that constellated hour, 
Nor locked alone in some green-hearted bower 

Among the nightingales, being in your fate, 
By fortune's sweet selection, graced above 
All grace, to hear that — Come, and be my iove I 



THE LOVER'S INTERDICT. g 25 1 

But when the singer singeth down the sweets 
To that most maiden-like and lovely bed — 
All out of soft persuasive roses spread — 

You must not touch the fair and flowery sheets 
Even in your thought ! and from your perfect bliss 
I furthermore must interdict you this : 

When all the wayward mists, because of her, 
Lie. in their white wings, moveless, on the air, 
You must not let the loose net of her hair 

Drag your heart to her ! nor from hushed breath stir 
Out of your sacred hiding. As you guess 

. She is my love — this woodland shepherdess. 

The cap, the clasps, the kirtle fringed along 
With myrtles, as the hand of dear old Kit 
Did of his cunning pleasure broider it, 

To ornament that dulcet piece of song 

Immortaled with refrains of — Live with me ! 
These to your fancy, one and all are free. 

But, favored traveller, ere you quit my gate, 
Promise to hold it, in your mind to be 
Enamored only of the melody, 

Else will I pray that all yon woody weight 
Of branch and shadow, as you pass algng, 
Crush you among the echoes of the song. 



252 BALLADS AND LOVE SONGS. 



THE SETTLER'S CHRISTMAS EVE. 

In a patch of clearing, scarcely more 

Than his brawny double hands, 
With woods behind and woods before, 

The Settler's cabin stands ; 
A little, low, and lonesome shed, 
With a roof of clapboards overhead. 

Aye, low, so low the wind-warped eave 

Hangs close against the door ; 
You might almost stretch a bishop's sleeve 

From the rafter to the floor ; 
And the window is not too large, a whit, 
For a lady's veil to curtain it. 

The roof-tree's bent and knotty knees 

By the Settler's axe are braced, 
And the door-yard fence is three felled trees 

With their bare arms interlaced ; 
And a grape-vine, shaggy and rough and red, 
Swings from the well-sweep's high, sharp head. 

And among the stubs, all charred and black, 

Away to the distant huts, 
Winds in and out the wagon-track, 

Cut full of zigzag ruts : 
And down and down to the sluggish pond, 
And through and up to the swamps beyond. 

And do you ask beneath such thatch 
What heart or hope maybe ? 



THE SETTLER'S CHRISTMAS EVE. 2 53 

Just pull the string of the wooden latch, 

And see what you shall see : . . 

A hearth-stone broad and warm and wide, 
With master and mistress either side. 

And 'twixt them, in the radiant glow, 

Prattling of Christmas joys, 
With faces in a shining row, 

Six children, girls and boys ; 
And in the cradle a head half-hid 
By the shaggy wolf-skin coverlid. 

For the baby sleeps in the shaded light 

As gently as a lamb, 
And two little stockings, scarlet bright, 

Are hanging 'gainst the jamb ; 
And the yellow cat lies all of a curl 
In the lap of a two-years' blue-eyed girl. 

On the dresser, saved for weeks and weeks, 

A hamper of apples stands, 
And some are red as the children's cheeks, 

And some are brown as their hands ; 
For cakes and apples must stead, you see, 
The rich man's costlier Christmas-tree. 

A clock that looks like a skeleton, 

From the corner ticks out bold ; 
And that never was such a clock to run 

You would hardly need be told, 
If you were to see the glances proud 
Drawn toward it when it strikes so loud. 



254 BALLADS AND LOVE SONGS. 

The Settler's rifle, bright and brown, 

Hangs high on the rafter-hooks. 
And swinging a hand's breadth lower down 

Is a modest shelf of books ; 
Bible and Hymn-book, thumbed all through, 
" Baxter's Call/' and a novel or two. 

" Peter Wilkirjs," " The Bloody Hand," 

" The Sailor's Bride and Bark," 
" Jerusalem and the Holy Land," 

"The Travels of Lewis and Clarke ; " 
Some tracts : among them, " The Milk-maid's Fall," 
" Pleasure Punished," and " Death at a Ball." 

A branch of sumach, shining bright, 

And a stag-horn, deck the wall, 
With a string of birds'-eggs, blue and white, 

Beneath. But after all, 
You will say the six little heads in a row 
By the hearth-stone make the prettiest show. 

The boldest urchin dares not stir ; 

But each heart, be sure, rebels 
As the father taps on the newspaper 

With his brass-bowed spectacles ; - 
And knitting-needle with needle clicks 
As the mother waits for the politics. 

He has rubbed the glass and rubbed the bow, 

And now is a fearful pause : 
" Come, Molly ! " he says, " come Sue, come Joe, 

And I'll tell you of Santa Claus ! " 
How the faces shine with glad surprise, 
As if the souls looked out of the eyes. 



THE SETTLER'S CHRISTMAS EVE. 255 

In a trice the dozen ruddy legs 
Are bare ; and speckled and brown 

And blue and gray, from the wall-side peg 
The stockings dangle down ; 

And the baby with- wondering eyes, looks out 

To see what the clatter is all about. 

" And what will Santa Claus bring ? " they tease, 
" And, say, is he tall and fair ? " 
While the younger climb the good man's knees, 

And the elder scale his chair ; 
And the mother jogs the cradle, and tries 
The charm of the dear old lullabies. 

So happily the hours fly past, 

'Tis pity to have them o'er ; 
But the rusty weights of the clock, at last 

Are dragging near the floor ; 
And the knitting kneedles, one and all, 
Are stuck in the round, red knitting-ball. 

;Now, all of a sudden the father twirls 

The empty apple-plate ; . 
"Old Santa Claus don't like his girls 
And boys to be up so late ! " 
He says, " And I'll warrant our star-faced cow, 
He's waiting astride o' the chimney now." 

Down the back of his chair they slide, 
They slide down arm and knee : 
" If Santa Claus is indeed outsidq, 
He sha'n't be kept for me ! " 
Cry one and all ; and away they go, 
Hurrying, flurrying, six in a row. 



256 BALLADS AND LOVE SONGS. 

• In the mother's eyes are happy tears 

As she sees them flutter away ; 
" My man," she says, " it is sixteen years 
Since our blessed wedding-day ; 
And I wouldn't think it but just a year 
If it wasn't for all these children here." 

And then they talk "of what they will do 

As the years shall come and go ; 
Of schooling for little Molly and Sue, 

And of land for John and Joe ; 
And Dick is so wise, and Dolly so fair, 
" They," says the mother, " will have luck to spare ! " 

" Aye, aye, good wife, that's clear, that's clear ! " 

Then, with eyes on the cradle bent, 
"And what if he in the wolf-skin here 
Turned out to be President ? 
Just think ! O, wouldn't it be fine, — 
Such fortune for your boy and mine ! " 

She stopped — her heart with hope elate — 

And kissed the golden head : 
Then, with the brawny hand of her mate 

Folded in hers, she said : 
" Walls as narrow, and a roof as low, 
Have sheltered a President, you know." 

And then they said they would work and wait, 

The good, sweet-hearted pair — 
You must have pulled the latch-string straight, 

Had you in truth been there, 
Feeling that you were not by leave 
At the Settler's hearth that Christmas Eve. 



THE OLD STORY. 257 



THE OLD STORY. 



The waiting-women wait at her feet, 

And the day is fading into the night, 
And close at her pillow, and round and sweet, 

The red rose burns like a lamp a-light, 
And under and over the gray mists fold ; 

And down and down from the mossy eaves, 

And down from the sycamore's long wild leaves 
The slow rain droppeth so cold, so cold. 

Ah ! never had sleeper a sleep so fair ; 

And the waiting-women that weep around, 
Have taken the combs from her golden hair, 

And it slideth over her face to the ground. 
They have hidden the light from her lovely eyes ; 

And down from the eaves where the mosses grow 

The rain is dripping so slow, so slow, 
And the night wind cries and cries and cries. 

From her hand they have taken the shining ring, 
They have brought the linen her shroud to make : 

O, the lark she was never so loath to sing, 

And the morn she was never so loath to awake ! 

And at their sewing they hear the rain, — 
Drip-drop, drip-drop over the eaves, 
And drip-drop over the sycamore leaves, 

As if there would never be sunshine again. 

The mourning train to the grave have gone, 
And the waiting women are here and are there, 

With birds at the windows, and gleams of the sun, 
Making the chamber of death to be fair. 

n 



258 BALLADS AND LOVE SONGS. 

And under and over the mist unlaps, 

And ruby and amethyst burn through the gray, 
And driest bushes grow green with spray, 

And the dimpled water its glad hands claps. 

The leaves of the sycamore dance and wave, 
And the mourners put off the mourning shows ; 

And over the pathway down to the grave 
The long grass blows and blows and blows. 

And every drip-drop rounds to a flower, 

And love in the heart of the young man springs, 
And the hands of the maidens shine with rings, 

As if all life were a festival hour. 



BALDER'S WIFE. , 

Her casement like a watchful eye 

From the face of the wall looks down, 
Lashed round with ivy vines so dry, 

And with ivy leaves so brown. 
Her golden head in her lily hand 

Like a star in the- spray o' th' sea, 
And wearily rocking to and fro, 
She sings so sweet and she sings so low 

To the little babe on her knee. 
But let her sing what tune she may, 

Never so light and never so gay, 
It slips and slides and dies away 

To the moan of the willow water. 



BALDER'S WIFE. 259 

Like some bright honey-hearted rose 

That the wild wind rudely mocks, 
She blooms from the dawn to the day's sweet close 

Hemmed in with a world of rocks. 
The livelong night she doth not stir, 

But keeps at her casement lorn, 
And the skirts of the darkness shine with her 

As they shine with the light o' the morn. 
And all who pass may hear her lay, 

But let it be what tune it may, 
It slips and slides and dies away 

To the moan of the willow water. 

And there, within that one-eyed tower, 

Lashed round with the ivy brown, 
She droops like some unpitied flower 

That the rain-fall washes down : 
The damp o' th' dew in her golden hair, 

• Her cheek like the spray o' th' sea, 
And wearily rocking to and fro 
She sings so sweet and she sings so low 

To the little babe on her knee. 
But let her sing what tune she may, 

Never so glad and never so gay, - 
It slips and slides and dies away 

To the moan of the willow water. 






POEMS OF THOUGHT. 



UNDER THE SHADOW. 

My sorrowing friend, arise and go 
About thy house with patient care ; 

The hand that bows thy head so low 
Will bear the ills thou canst not bear. 

Arise, and all thy tasks fulfill, 

And as thy day thy strength shall be ; 

Were there no power beyond the ill, 
The ill could not have come to thee. 

Though cloud and storm encompass thee, 

Be not afflicted nor afraid ; 
Thou know r est the shadow could not be 

Were there no sun beyond the shade. 

For thy beloved, dead and gone, 

Let sweet, not bitter, tears be shed ; 

Nor " open thy dark saying on 

The harp/' as though thy faith were dead. 

Couldst thou even have them reappear 
In bodies plain to mortal sense, 

How were the miracle more clear 

To bring them than to take them hence ? 



-UNDER THE SHADOW. 261 

Then let thy soul cry in thee thus 

No more, nor let thine eyes thus weep ; 

Nothing can be withdrawn from us 

That we have any need to keep. 

« 
Arise, and seek some height to gain 

From life's dark lesson day by day, 
Nor just rehearse its peace and pain — 

A wearied actor at the play. 

Nor grieve that will so much transcends 

Thy feeble powers, but in content 
Do what thou canst, and leave the ends 

And issues with the Omnipotent. 

Dust as thou art, and born to woe, 
Seeing darkly, and as through a glass, 

He made thee thus to be, for lo ! 

He made the grass, and flower of grass. 

The tempest's cry, the thunder's moan, 

The waste of waters, wild and dim, 
•The still small voice thou hear'st alone — 
All, all alike interpret Him. 

Arise, my friend, and go about 

Thy darkened house with cheerful feet ; 

Yield not one jot to fear nor doubt, 
But, baffled, broken, still repeat : 

:c 'Tis mine to work, and not to win ; 

The soul must wait to have her wings ; 
Even time is but a landmark in 
The great eternity of things. 



262 POEMS OF THOUGHT. 

" Is it so much that thou below, 

O heart, shouldst fail of thy desire, 
When death, as we believe and know, 
Is but a call to come up 'higher?" 



GOD IS LOVE. 

Ah, there are mighty things under the sun, 

Great deeds have been acted, great words have 
been said, 

Not just uplifting some fortunate one, 

But lifting up all men the more by a head. 

Aye, the more by the head, and the shoulders too 1 
Ten thousand may sin, and a thousand may fall, 

And it may have been me, and it yet may be you, 
But the angel in one proves the. angel in all. 

And whatever is mighty, whatever is high, 

Lifting men, lifting woman their natures above, 

And close to the kinship they hold to the sky 
Why, this I affirm, that its essence is Love. 

The poorest, the meanest has right to his share — 
For the life of his heart, for the strength of his 
hand, 

'Tis the sinew of work, 'tis the spirit of prayer — 
And here, and God help me, I take up my stand. 

No pain but it hushes to peace in its arms, 

No pale cheek it cannot with kisses make bright, 









GOD IS LOVE. 263 

Its wonder of splendors has made the world's storms 
To snine as with rainbows, since first there was 
light. ^ 

Go, bring me whatever the poets have praised, 
The mantles of queens, the red roses of May, 

I'll match them, I care not how grandly emblazed, 
With the love of the beggar who sits by the way. 

When I think of the gifts that have honored Love's 
shrine — 

Heart, hope, soul, and body, all mortal can give — 
For the sake of a passion superbly divine, 

I am glad, nay, and more, I am proud that I live 1 

Fair women have made them espousals with death, 
And through the white flames as through lilies have 
trod, 
And men have with cloven tongues preached for their 
faith, 
And held up their hands, stiff with thumb-screws, to 
God. 

I have seen a great people its vantage defer 
To the love that had moved it as love only can, 

A whole nation stooping with conscience astir 
To a chattel with crop ears, and calling it man. 

Compared, O my beautiful Country, to thee, 
In this tenderest touch of the manacled hand, 

The tops of the pyramids sink to the sea, 

And the thrones of the earth slide together like 
sand. 



264 POEMS OF THOUGHT. 

Immortal with beauty and vital with youth, 

Thou standest, O Love, as thou always hast stood 

From the wastes of the ages, proclaiming this truth, 
All peoples and nations are made of one blood. 

Ennobled by scoffing and honored by shame, 

The chiefest of great ones, the crown and the head, 

Attested by miracles done in thy name 

For the blind, for the lame, for the sick and the 
dead. 

Because He in all things was tempted like me, 

Through the sweet human hope, by the cross that 
He bore, 

For the love which so much to the Marys could be, 
Christ Jesus the man, not the God, I adore. 



LIFE'S MYSTERIES. 

Round and round the wheel doth run, 

And now doth rise, and now doth fall ; 
How many lives we live in one, 
. And how much less than one, in all ! 

The past as present as to-day — 

How strange, how wonderful ! it seems 

A player playing in a play, 

A dreamer dreaming that he dreams ! 

But when the mind through devious glooms 
Drifts onward to the dark amain, 






LIFE'S MYSTERIES. 265 

Her wand stern Conscience reassumes, 
And holds us to ourselves again. 

Vague reminiscences come back 

Of things we seem, in part, to have known, 
And Fancy pieces what they lack 

With shreds and colors all her own 

Fancy, whose wing so high can soar, 
Whose vision hath so broad a glance, 

We feel sometimes as if no more 
Amenable to change and chance. 

And yet, one tiny thread being broke — 

One idol taken from .our hands, 
The eternal hills roll up like smoke, 

The earth's foundations shake like sands ! 

Ah ! how the colder pulse still starts 

To think of that one hour sublime. 
We hugged heaven down into our hearts, 

And clutched eternity in time ! 

When love's dear eyes first looked in ours, 

When love's dear brows were strange to frowns? 

When all the stars were burning flowers 
That we might pluck and wear for crowns. 

We cannot choose but cry and cry — 

O, that its joys wq might repeat ! 
When just its mutability 

Made all the sweetness of it sweet. 



266 POEMS OF THOUGHT. 

Close to the precipice's brink 

We press, look down, and, while we quail 
From the bad thought we dare not think, 

Lift curiously the awful vail. 

We do the thing we would not do — 
Our wills being set against our wills, 

And suffer o'er and o'er anew 
The penalty our peace that kills. 

Great God, we know not what we know 

Or what we are, or are to be ! 
We only trust we cannot go 
- Through sin's disgrace outside of Thee. 

And trust that though we are driven in 
And forced upon thy name to call 

At last, by very strength of sin, 
Thou wilt have mercv on us all 1 



POEMS OF NATURE AND HOME. 



A DREAM OF HOME. 

Sunset ! A hush is on the air, 

Their gray old heads the mountains bare, 

As if the winds were saying prayer. 

The woodland, with its broad green wing, 
Shuts close the insect whispering, 
And lo ! the sea gets up to sing. 

The day's last splendor fades and dies, 
And shadows one by one arise, 
To light the candles of the skies. 

O wild flowers, wet with tearful dew, 

woods, with starlight shining through, 
My heart is back to-night with you ! 

1 know each beech and maple tree, 
Each climbing brier and shrub I see, — 
Like friends they stand to welcome me. 

Musing I go along the streams, 
Sweetly believing in my dreams ; 
For fancy like a prophet seems. 



268 POEMS OF NATURE AND HOME. 

Footsteps beside me tread the sod 
As in the twilights gone they trod \ 
And I unlearn my doubts, thank God ! 

Unlearn my doubts, forget my fears, 
And that bad carelessness that sears 
And makes me older than my years. 

I hear a dear, familiar tone, 

A loving hand is in my own, 

And earth seems made for me alone. 

Tf I my fortunes could have planned, 
I would not have let go that hand ; 
But- they must fall who learn to stand. 

And how to blend life's varied hues, 
What ill to find, what good to lose, 
My Father knoweth best to choose. 



EVENING PASTIMES. 

Sitting by my fire alone, 
When the winds are rough and cold, 
And I feel myself grow old 

Thinking of the summers flown. 

I have many a harmless art 
To beguile the tedious time : 
Sometimes reading some old rhyme 

I already know by heart ; 



FADED LEAVES. 269 

Sometimes singing over words 
Which in youth's dear day gone by 
Sounded sweet, so sweet that I 

Had no praises for the birds. 

Then, from off its secret shelf 
I from dust and moth remove 
The old garment of my love, 

In the which I wrap myself. 

And a little while am vain ; 
But its rose hue will not bear 
The sad light of faded hair ; 

So I fold it up again, 

More in patience than regret : 
Not a leaf the forest through 
But is sung and whispered to : 

I shall wear that garment yet. 



FADED LEAVES. 

The hills are bright with maples yet ; 

But down the level land 
The beech leaves rustle in the wind 

As dry and brown as sand. 

The clouds in bars of rusty red 

Along the hill-tops glow, 
And in the still, sharp air, the frost 

Is like a dream of snow. 



270 POEMS OF NATURE AND HOME. 

The berries of the brier-rose 
Have lost their rounded pride : 

The bitter-sweet chrysanthemums 
Are drooping heavy-eyed. 

The cricket grows more friendly now, 
The dormouse sly and wise, 

Hiding away in the disgrace 
Of nature, from men's eyes. 

The pigeons in black wavering lines 
Are swinging toward the sun ; 

And all the wide and withered fields 
Proclaim the summer done. 

His store of nuts and acorns now 

The squirrel hastes to gain, 
And sets his house in order for 
The winter's dreary reign. 

'Tis time to light the evening fire, 
To read good books, to sing 

The low and lovely songs that breathe 
Of the eternal Spring. 



THE LIGHT OF DAYS GONE BY. 

Some comfort when all else is night, 

About his fortune plays, 
Who sets his dark to-days in the light 

Of the sunnier yesterdays. 



THE LIGHT OF DAYS GONE BY. 27 1 

In memory of joy that's been 

§omething of joy is, still ; 
Where no dew is, we may dabble in 

A dream of the dew at will. 

All with the dusty city's throng 

Walled round, I mused to-day 
Of flowery sheets lying white along 

The pleasant grass of the way. 

Under the hedge by the brawling brook 

I heard the woodpecker's tap, 
And the drunken trills of the blackbirds shook 
The sassafras leaves in my lap. 

I thought of the rainy morning air 

Dropping down through the pine, 
Of furrows fresh from the shining share, 

And smelling sweeter than wine. 

Of the soft, thick moss, and how it gf ew 

With silver beads impearled, 
In the well that we used to think ran through 

To the other side of the world. 

I thought of the old barn set about 

With its stacks of sweet, dry hay ; 
Of the swallows flying in and out 

Through the gables, steep and gray ; 

Thought of the golden hum of the bees, 
Of the cocks with their heads so high, 

Making it morn in the tops of the trees 
Before it was morn in the sky. 



2)F2 POEMS OF NATURE AND HOME. 

And of the home, of the dear old home, 
With its brown and rose-bound wall, 

Where we fancied death could never come - 
I thought of it more than of all. 

Each childish play-ground memory claims, 

Telling me here, and thus, 
We called to the echoes by their names, 

Till we made them answer us. 

Thank God, when other power decays, 

And other pleasures die, 
We still may set our dark to-days - 

In the light of days gone by. 



A SEA SONG. 

Come, make for me a little song — 
'Twas so a spirit said to me — 

And make it just four verses long, 
And make it sweet as it' can be, 
And make it all about the sea. 

Sing me about the wild waste shore, 
Where, long and long ago, with me 

You watched the silver sails that bore 
The great, strong ships across the sea — 
The blue, the bright, the boundless sea. 

Sing me about the plans we planned : 
How one of those good ships should be 



SERMONS IN STONES. 273 

My way to find some flowery land . 
Away beyond the misty sea, 
Where, alway, you should live with me. 

Sing, lastly, how our hearts were caught 
Up into heaven, because that we 

Knew not the flowery land we sought 
Lay all beyond that other sea — 
That soundless, sailless, solemn sea. 



SERMONS IN STONES. 

Flower of the deep red zone, 
Rain the fine light about thee, near and far, 
Hold the wide earth, so as the evening star 

Holdeth all heaven, alone, 
And with thy wondrous glory make men see 
His greater glory who did fashion thee ! 

Sing, little goldfinch, sing ! 
Make the rough billows lift their curly ears 
And listen, fill the violets' eyes with tears, 

Make the green leaves to swing 
As in a dance, when thou dost hie along, 
Showing the sweetness whence thou get'st thy song. 

O daisies of the hills, 
When winds do pipe to charm ye, be not slow. 
Crowd up, crowd up, and make your shoulders show 

White o'er the daffodils! 
18 



2 74 FOE MS OF, NATURE AND HOME. 

Yea, shadow forth through your excelling grace 
With whom ye have held counsel face to face. 

Fill fuller our desire, 
Gay grasses ; trick your lowly stems with green, 
And wear your splendors even as a queen 

Weareth her soft attire. 
Unfold the cunning mystery of design 
That combs out all your skirts to ribbons fine. 

And O my heart, my heart, 
Be careful to go strewing in and out 
Thy way with good deeds, lest it come about 

That when thou shalt depart, 
No low lamenting tongue be found to say, 
The world is poorer since thou went'st away ! 

Thou shouldst not idly beat, 

While beauty draweth good men's thoughts to prayer, 

Even as the bird's wing draweth out the air, 

But make so fair and sweet 
Thy house of clay, some dusk shall spread about, 
When death unlocks the door and lets thee out. 



MY PICTURE. 

Ah, how the eye on the picture stops 
Where the lights of memory shine ! 

My friend, to thee I will leave the sea, 
If only this be mine, 

For the thought of the breeze in the tops of the trees 
Stirs my blood like wine ! 



MY PIC TURK. . 275 

I will leave the sea and leave the ships, 
And the light-house, taper and tall, 

The bar so low, whence the fishers go, 
And the fishers' wives and all, 

If thou wilt agree to leave to me 
This picture for my wall. 

m 

I leave thee all the palaces, 

With their turrets in the sky — 
The hunting-grounds, the hawks and hounds — 

They please nor ear nor eye ; 
But the sturdy strokes on the sides o' the oaks 

Make my pulses fly. 

The old cathedral, filling all 

The street with its shadow brown, 

The organ grand, and the choiring band, 

And the priest with his shaven crown ; 

'Tis the wail of the hymn in the wild-wood dim, 
That bends and bows me down. 

The shepherd piping to his flock 

In the merry month of the May, 
The lady fair with the golden hair, 

And the knight so gallant and gay — 
For the wood so drear that is pictured here, 

I give them all away. 

I give the cities and give the sea, 

The ships and the bar so low, 
And fishers and wives whose dreary lives 

Speak from the canvas so ; 
And for all of these I must have the trees — 

The trees on the hills of snow ! 



276. POEMS OF NATURE AND HOME. 

And shall we be agreed, my friend ? 

Shall it stand as I have said ? 
For the sake of the shade wherein I played, 

And for the sake of my dead, 
That lie so low on the hills of snow, 

Shall it be as I have said ? 



MORNING IN THE MOUNTAINS. 

Morn on the mountains ! streaks of roseate light 
Up the high east athwart the shadows run ; 

The last low star fades softly out of sight, 
And the gray mists go forth to meet the sun. 

And now from every sheltering shrub and vine, 
And thicket wild with many a tangled spray, 

And from the birch and elm and rough-browed pine, 
The birds begin to serenade the day. 

And now. the cock his sleepy harem thrills 

With clarion calls, and down the flowery dells ; 

And from their mossy hollows in the hills 

The sheep have started all their tinkling bells. 

Lo, the great sun ! and nature everywhere 
Is all alive, and sweet as she can be ; 

A thousand happy sounds are in the air, 
A thousand by the rivers and the sea. 

The dipping oar, the boatman's cheerful horn, 
The well-sweep, creaking in its rise and fall ; 



MORNING IN THE MOUNTAINS. 277 

And pleasantly along the springing corn, 
The music of the ploughshare, best of all, — 

The insect's little hum, the whir and beat 
Of myriad wings, the mower's song so blithe, 

The patter of the schoolboy's naked feet, 
The joyous ringing of the whetted scythe, — 

The low of kine, the falling meadow bar, 

The teamster's whistle gay, the droning round 

Of the wet mill-wheel; and the tuneful jar 
Of hollow milk-pans, swell the general sound. 

And by the sea, and in each vale and glen 
Are happy sights, as well as sounds to hear ; 

The world of things, and the great world of men, 
All, all is busy, busy far and near. 

The ant is hard at work, and everywhere 

The bee is balanced on her wings so brown ; 

And the black spider on her slender stair 
Is running down and up, and up and down. 

The pine-wood smoke in bright, fantastic curls, 
Above the low-roofed homestead sweeps away, 

And o'er the groups of merry boys and girls 
That pick the berries bright, or rake the hay. 

Morn on the mountains ! the enkindling skies, 
The flowery fields, the meadows, and the sea, 

All are so fair, the heart within me cries, 

How good, how wondrous good our God must be ! 



278 POEMS OF NATURE AND HOME. 



THE THISTLE FLOWER. 

My homely flower that blooms along 

The dry and dusty ways, 
I have a mind to make a song, 

And make it in thy praise ; 
For thou art favored of my heart, 
Humble and outcast as thou art. 

Though never with the plants of grace 

In garden borders set, 
Full often have I seen thy face 

With tender tear-drops wet, 
And seen thy gray and ragged sleeves 
All wringing with them, morns and eves. 

Albeit thou livest in a bush 

Of such unsightly form, 
Thou hast not any need to blush — 

Thou hast thine own sweet charm ; 
And for that charm I love thee so, 
And not for any outward show. 

The iron-weed, so straight and fine, 

Above thy head may rise, 
And all .in glossy purple shine ; 

But to my partial eyes 
It cannot harm thee — thou hast still 
A place no finer flower can fill. 

The fennel, she is courted ,at 
The porch-side and the door — 



MY DARLINGS. 279 

Thou hast no lovers, and for that 

I love thee all the more ; 
Only the wind and rain to be 
Thy friends, and keep thee company. 

So, being left to take thine ease 

Behind thy thorny wall, 
Thy little head with vanities 

Has not been turned at all, 
And all field beauties give me grace 
To praise thee to thy very face. 

So, thou shalt evermore belong 

To me from this sweet hour, 
And I will take thee for my song, 

And take thee for my flower, 
And by the great, and proud, and high 
Unenvied, we will live and die. 



MY DARLINGS. 

My Rose, so red and round, 
My Daisy, darling of the summer weather, 
You must go down now, and keep house together, 

Low underground ! 

O little silver line 
Of meadow water, ere the cloud rise darkling, 
Slip out of sight, and with your comely sparkling 

Make their hearth shine. 



280 POEMS OF NATURE AND HOME. 

Leaves of the garden bowers, 
The frost is coming soon, — your prime is over ; 
So gently fall, and make a soft, warm cover 

To house my flowers. 

Lithe willow, too, forego 
The crown that makes you queen of woodland graces, 
Nor leave the winds to shear the lady tresses 

From your drooped brow. 

Oak, held by strength apart 
From all the trees, stop now your stems from growing, 
And send the sap, while yet 'tis bravely flowing, 

Back to your heart. 

And ere the autumn sleet 
Freeze into ice, or sift to bitter snowing, 
Make compact with your peers for overstrowing 

My darlings sweet. 

So when their sleepy eyes 
Shall be unlocked by May with rainy kisses, 
They to the sweet renewal of old blisses 

Refreshed may rise. 

Lord, in that evil day 
When my own wicked thoughts like thieves waylay 

me, 
Or when pricked conscience rises up to slay me, 

Shield me, I pray- 

Aye, when the storm shall drive, 
Spread thy two blessed hands like leaves above me, 



THE FIELD SWEET-BRIER. 28 1 

And with thy great love, though none else should love 
me, 
Save me alive ! 



Heal with thy peace my strife ; 
And as the poet with his golden versing 
Lights his low house, give me, thy praise rehearsing, 

To light my life. 

Shed down thy grace in showers, 
And if some roots of good, at thy appearing, 
Be found in me, transplant them for the rearing 

Of heavenly flowers. 



THE FIELD SWEET-BRIER. 

I love the flowers that come about with spring, . 

And whether they be scarlet, white, or blue, 
It mattereth to me not anything ; 

For when I see them full of sun and dew, 
My heart doth get so full with its delight, 
I know not blue from red, nor red from white. 

Sometimes I choose the lily, without stain ; 

The royal rose sometimes the best I call ; 
Then the low daisy, dancing with the rain, 

Doth seem to me the finest flower of all ; 
And yet if only one could bloom for me — 
I know right well what flower that one would be 1 



282 POEMS OF NATURE AND HOME. 

Yea, so I think my native wilding brier, 

With just her thin four leaves, and stem so rough, 

Could, with her sweetness, give me my desire, 
Aye, all my life long give me sweets enough ; 

For though she be not vaunted to excel, 

She in all modest grace aboundeth well. 

And I would have no whit the less content, 
Because she hath not won the poet's voice, 

To pluck her little stars for ornament, 

And that no man were poorer for my choice, 

Since she perforce must shine above the rest 

In comely looks, because I love her best ! 

When fancy taketh wing, and wills to go 
Where all selected glories blush and bloom, 

I search and find the flower that used to grow 
Close by the door-stone of the' dear old home — 

The flower whose knitted roots we did divide 

For sad transplanting, when the mother died. 

All of the early and the latter May, 

And through the windless heats of middle June, 
Our green- armed brier held for us clay by day, 

The morning coolness till the afternoon ; 
And every bird that took his grateful share, 
Sang with a heavenlier tongue than otherwhere. 

And when from out the west the low sun shone, 

It used to make our pulses leap and thrill 
To see her lift her shadow from the stone, 
* And push it in among us o'er the sill — 
O'erstrow with flowers, and then push softly in, 
As if she were our very kith and kin. 



THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE HILL. 283 

So, seeing still at evening's golden close 

This shadow with our childish shadows blend, 

We came to love our simple four-leaved rose, 
As if she were a sister or a friend. 

And if my eyes all flowers but one must lose, 

Our wild sweet-brier would be the one to choose. 



THE LITTLE HOUSE ON THE HILL. 

Memory, be sweet to me — 
Take, take all else at will, 

So thou but leave me safe and sound, 
Without a token my heart to wound, 
The little house on the hill ! 

Take all of best from east to west, 

So thou but leave me still 
The chamber, where. in the starry light 

1 used to lie awake at night 
And list to the whip-poor-will. 

Take violet-bed, and rose-tree red, 

And the purple flags by the mill, 
The meadow gay, and the garden-ground, 
But leave, O leave me safe and sound 
The little house on the hill ! 

The daisy-lane, and the dove's low plane, 

And the cuckoo's tender bill, 
Take one and all, but leave the dreams 
That turned the rafters to golden beams, 
In the little house on the hill ! 



284 POEMS OF NATURE AND HOME. 

The gables brown, they have tumbled down, 

And dry is the brook by the mill ; 
The sheets I used with care to keep 
Have wrapt my dead for the last long sleep, 
In the valley, low and still. 

But, Memory, be sweet to me, 

And build the walls, at will, 
Of the chamber where I used to mark, 
So softly rippling over the dark, 

The song of the whip-poor-will ! 

Ah, Memory, be sweet to me ! 

All other fountains chill ; 
But leave that song so weird and wild, 
Dear as its' life to the heart of the child, 

In the little house on the hill ! 



THE OLD HOUSE. 

My little birds, with backs as brown 
As sand, and throats as white as frost, 

I've searched the summer up and down, 
And think the other birds have lost 

The tunes you sang, so sweet so low, 

About the old house, long ago. 

My little flowers, that with your bloom 
So hid the grass you grew upon, 

A child's foot scarce had any room 

Between you, — are you dead and gone ? 



THE OLD HOUSE. 285 

I've searched through fields and gardens rare, 
Nor found your likeness anywhere. 

My little hearts, that beat so high 
With love to God, and trust in men, 

O, come to me, and say if I 

But dream, or was I dreaming then, 

What time we sat within the glow 

Of the old house hearth, long ago ? 

My little hearts, so fond, so true, 

I searched the world all far and wide, 

And never found the like of you : 
God grant we meet the other side 

The darkness 'twixt us now that stands, 

In that new house not made with hands ! 



FOR THE LOST. 



LOST LILIES. 

Show you her picture ? 'Here it lies ! 

Hands of lilies, and lily-like brow ; 
Mouth that is bright as a rose, and eyes 

That are just the soul's sweetest overflow. 

Darling shoulders, softly pale, 

Borne by the undulating play 
Of the life below, up out of their veil, 

Like lilies out o' the waves o' the May. 

Throat as white as the throat of a swan, 
And all as proudly graceful held ; 

Fair, Bare bosom " clothed upon 
With chastity," like the lady of eld. 

Tender lids, that drooping down, 

Chide your glances over bold ; 
Fair, with a golden gleam in the brown, 

And brown again in the gleamy gold. 

These on your eyes like a splendor fall, 
And you marvel not at my love, I see ; 

But it was not one, and it was not all, 
That made her the angel she was to me. 



LOST LILIES. 287 

So snut the picture and put it away, 

Your fancy is only thus misled ; 
What can the dull, cold semblance say, 

When the spirit and life of the life is fled ? 

Seven long years, and seven again, 

And three to the seven — a weary space — 

The weary fingers of the rain 

Have drawn the daisies over her face. 

Seven and seven years, and three, 

The leaves have faded to death in the frost, 

Since the shadow that made for me 

The world a shadow my pathway crossed. 

And now and then some meteor gleam 
Has broken the gloom of my life apart, 

Or the only thread of some raveled dream 
Has slid like sunshine in my heart. 

But never a planet, steady and still, 
And never a rainbow, brave and fine, 

And never the flowery head of a hill 
Has made the cloud of my life to shine. 

Yet God is love ! and this I trust, 

Though summer is over and sweetness done, 
That all my lilies are safe, in the dust, 

As they were in the glow of the great, glad sun. 

Yea, God is love, and love is might ! 

Mighty as surely to keep as to make ; 
And the sleepers, sleeping in death's dark night, 

In the resurrection of life shall wake. 



288 FOR THE LOST. 



A WONDER. 



Still alway groweth in me the great wonder, 
When all the fields are blushing like the dawn, 

And only one poor little flower ploughed under, 
That I can see no flowers, that one being gone : 
No # flower of all, because of one being gone. 

Aye, ever in me groweth the great wonder, 
When all the hills are shining, white and red, 

And only one poor little flower ploughed under, 
That it were all as one if all were dead : 
Aye, all as one if all the flowers were dead. 

I cannot feel the beauty of the roses ; 

Their soft leaves seem to me but layers of dust ; 

Out of my opening hand each blessing closes : 
Nothing is left me but my hope and trust, 
Nothing but heavenly hope and heavenly trust. 

I get no sweetness of the sweetest places ; 
My house, my friends no longer comfort me ; 

Strange somehow grow the old familiar faces ; 
For I can nothing have, not having thee : 
All my possessions I possessed through thee. 

Having, I have them not — strange contradiction ! 
Heaven needs must cast its shadow on our earth ; 

Yea, drown us in the waters of affliction 

Breast high, to make us know our treasure's worth, 
To make us know how much our love is worth. 



■ 



• ' MOST BELOVED. 289 

And while I mourn, trfe anguish of my story 

Breaks, as the wave breaks on the hindering bar : 

Thou art but hidden in the deeps of glory, 
Even as the sunshine hides the lessening star, 
And with true love I love thee from afar. 

I know our Father must be good, not evil, 
And murmur not, for faith's sake, at my ill ; 

Nor at the mystery of the working cavil, 

That somehow bindeth all things in his will, 

And, though He slay me, makes me trust Him still. 



MOST BELOVED. 

My heart thou makest void, and full ; 

Thou giv'st, thou tak'st away my care ; 
. O most beloved ! most beautiful ! 

I miss, and find thee everywhere ! 

In the sweet water, as it flows ; 

The winds, that kiss me as they pass ; 
The starry shadow of the rose, 

Sitting beside her on the grass ; 

The daffodilly, trying to bless 

With better light the beauteous air ; 

The lily, wearing the white dress 
Of sanctuary, to be more fair ; 

The lithe-armed, dainty-fingered brier, 
That in the woods, so dim and drear, 
19 






2go FOR THE LOST. 

Lights up betimes her tender fire 
To soothe the homesick pioneer ; 

The moth, his brown sails balancing 
Along the stubble, crisp and dry ; 

The ground-flower, with a blood-red ring 
On either hand ; the pewet's cry ; 

The friendly robin's gracious note ; 

The hills, with curious weeds o'errun ; 
The althea, in her crimson coat 

Tricked out to please the wearied sun ; 

The dandelion, whose golden share 
Is set before the rustic's plough ; 

The hum of insects in the air ; 

The blooming bush ; the withered bough ; 

The coming on of eve ; the springs 
Of daybreak, soft and silver bright ; 

The frost, that with rough, rugged wings 
Blows down the cankered buds ; the white, 

Long drifts of winter snow ; the heat 
Of August falling still and wide ; 

Broad cornfields ; one chance stalk of wheat, 
Standing with bright head hung aside : 

All things, my darling, all things seem 
. In some strange way to speak of thee ; 
Nothing is half so much a dream, 
Nothing so much reality. 



MY DARLINGS. 29 1 



MY DARLINGS. 



When steps are hurrying homeward, 
And night the world o'erspreads, 

And I see at the open windows 
The shining of little heads, 

I think of you, my darlings, 

In your low and lonesome beds. 

And when the latch is lifted, 
And I hear the voices glad, 

I feel my arms more empty, 

, My heart more widely sad ; 

For we measure dearth of blessings 
By the blessings we have had. 

But sometimes in sweet visions 
My faith to sight expands, 

And with my babes in his bosom, 
My Lord before me stands, 

And I feel on my head, bowed lowly, 
The touches of little hands. 

Then pain is lost in patience, 
And tears no longer flow : 

They are only dead to the sorrow 
And sin of life, I know ; 

For if they were not immortal 
My love would make them so. 



292 FOR THE LOST. 



IN DESPAIR. 

I know not what the world may be, — 
For since I have nor hopes nor fears, 
All things seem strange and far -to me, 
As though I had sailed on some sad sea, 
For years and years, and years and years ! 

Sailed through blind -mists, you understand, 
And leagues of bleak and bitter foam ; 

Seeing belts of rock and bars of sand, 

But never a strip of flowery land, 

And never the light of hearth or home. 

All day and night, all night and day, 

I sit in my darkened house alone ; 
Come thou, whose laughter sounds so gay, 
Come hither, for chanty come ! and say 

What flowers are faded, and what are blown. 

Does the great, glad sun, as he used fo, rise ? 

Or is it always a weary night ? 
A shadow has fallen across my eyes, 
Come hither and tell me about the skies, — 

Are there drops of rain ? are there drops of light ? 

Keep not, dear heart, so far away, 

With thy laughter light and laughter low, 
But come to my darkened house, I pray, 
And tell me what of the fields to-day, — 
Or lilies, or snow ? or lilies, or snow ? 



WAIT. 293 

Do the hulls of the ripe nuts hang apart ? 

Do the leaves of the locust drop in the well ? 
Or is it the time for the buds to start? 
O gay little heart, O little gay heart, 

Come hither and tell, come hither and tell ! 

The day of my hope is cold and dead, 

The sun is down and the light is gone ; 
Come hither thou of the roses red, 
Of the gay, glad heart, and the golden head, 
And tell of the dawn, of the dew and the dawn. 



WAIT. 

Go not far in the land of light ! 

A little while by the golden gate, 
Lest that I lose you out of sight, 

Wait, my darling, wait. 

Forever now from your happy eyes 
Life's scenic picture has passed away; 

You have entered into realities, 
And I am yet at the play ! 

Yet at the play of time — through all, 
Thinking of you, and your high estate ; 

\ little while, and the curtain will fall — 
Wait, my darling, wait ! 

Mine is a dreary part to do — 

A mask of mirth on a mourning brow ; 



294 FOR THE LOST. 

The chance approval, the flower or two, 
Are nothing — nothing now ! 



The last sad act is drawing on ; 

A little while by the golden gate 
Of the holy heaven to which you are gone, 

Wait, my darling, wait. 



RELIGIOUS POEMS. 



THE GOLDEN MEAN. 

Lest to evil ways I run 

When I go abroad, 
Shine about me, like the sun, 

O my gracious Lord ! 
Make the clouds, with .silver glowing, 
Like a mist of lilies blowing 

O'er the summer sward ; 
And^mine eyes keep Thou from being 
Ever satisfied with seeing, 

O my light, my Lord ! 

Lest my thoughts on discontent 

Should in sleep be fed, 
Make the darkness like a tent 

Round about my bed ; 
Sweet as honey to the taster, 
Make my dreams be, O my Master, 
Sweet as honey, ere it loses 

Spice of meadow-blooms, 
While the taster tastes the roses 

In the golden combs. 

Lest I live in lowly ease, 
Or in lofty scorn, 



296 RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

Make me like the strawberries 

That run among the corn ; 
Grateful in the shadows keeping, 
Of the broad leaves o'er me sweeping ; 
In the gold crop's stead, to render 
Some small berries, red and tender, 
Like the blushing morn. 

Lest that pain to pain be placed — 

Weary day to day, 
Let me sit at good men's feasts 

When the house is gay : 
Let my heart beat up to measures 
Of all comfortable pleasures, 

Till the morning gray, 
O'er the eastern hill-tops glancing, 
Sets the woodlands all to dancing, 

And scares night away. 

Lest that I in vain pretense 

Careless live and move, 
Heart and mind, and soul and sense, 

Quicken Thou with love ! 
Fold its music over, under, 
Breath of flute and boom of thunder, 
Nor make satisfied my hearing, 
As I go on, nearing, nearing, 

Him whose name is Love. 



THE FIRE BY THE SEA. 297 



THE FIRE BY THE SEA. 

There were seven fishers, with nets in their hands, 

And they walked and talked by the sea-side sands ; 
Yet sweet as the sweet dew-fall 

The words they spake, though they spake so low, 

Across the long, dim centuries flow, 
And we know them, one and all — 
Aye ! know them and love them all. 

Seven sad men in the days of old, 
And one was gentle, and one was bold, 

And they walked with downward eyes ; 
The bold was Peter, the gentle was John, 
And they all were sad, for the Lord was gone, 

And they knew not if He would rise — 

Knew not if the dead would rise. 

The livelong night, 'till the moon went out 
In the drowning waters, they beat about ; 

Beat slow through the fog their way ; 
And -the sails drooped down with wringing^ wet, 
And no man drew but an empty net, 

And now 'twas the break of the day — 

The great, glad break of th£ day. 

" Cast in your nets on the other side ! " 
('Twas Jesus speaking across the tide ;) 

And they cast and were dragging hard ; 
But that disciple whom Jesus loved 
Cried straightway out, for his heart was moved : 

" It is our risen Lord — 

Our Master, and our Lord ! " 



298 RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

Then Simon, girding his fisher's coat, 
Went over the nets and out of the boat — 

Aye ! first of them all was he ; 

Repenting sore the denial past, 

He feared no longer. his heart to cast 

Like an anchor into the sea — 

Down deep in the hungry sea. 

And the others, through the mists so dim, 
In a little ship came after him, 

Dragging their net through the tide ; 
And when they had gotten close to the land 
They saw a fire of coals on the sand, 

And, with arms of love so wide, 

Jesus, the crucified ! 

'Tis long, and long, and long ago 
Since the rosy lights began to flow 

O'er the hills of Galilee ; 
And with eager eyes and lifted hands 
The seven fishers saw on the sands 
The fire of coals by the sea — 
On the wet, wild sands by the sea. 

'Tis long ago, yet faith in our souls 
Is kindled just by that fire of coals 

That streamed o'er the mists of the sea; 
Where Peter, girding his fisher's coat, 
Went oveT the nets and out of the boat, 
To answer, " Lov'st thou me ? " 
llirice over, " Lov'st thou me ? " 



THE SURE WITNESS, 299 



THE SURE WITNESS. 

The solemn wood had spread 
Shadows around my head ; 
" Curtains they are," I said, 
1 Hung dim and still about the house of prayer." 
Softly among the limbs, 
Turning the leaves of hymns, 
I heard the winds, and asked if God were there. 
No voice replied, but while I listening stood, 
Sweet peace made holy hushes through the wood. 

With ruddy, open hand, 

I saw the wild rose stand 
Beside the green gate of the summer hills ; 

And pulling at her dress, 

I cried, " Sweet hermitess, 
Hast thou beheld Him who the dew distills ? " 
No voice replied, but while I listening bent, 
Her gracious beauty made my heart content. 

• -The moon in splendor shone ; 

" She walketh heaven alone, 
And seeth all things," to myself I mused ; 

" Hast thou beheld Him, then, 
Who hides Himself from men 
In that great power through nature interfused ? " 
No speech made answer, and no sign appeared, 
But in the silence I was soothed and cheered. 

Waking one time, strange awe 
Thrilling my soul, I saw 



300 RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

A kingly splendor round about the night ; 

Such cunning work the hand 

Of spinner never planned, — 
The finest wool may not be washed so white. 
**Hast thou come out of heaven ? " I asked ; and lo 1 
The snow was all the answer of the snow. 

Then my heart said, " Give o'er ; 

Question no more, no more ! 
The wind, the snow-storm, the wild hermit flower, 

The illuminated air, 

The pleasure after prayer, 
Proclaim the unoriginated Power ! 
The mystery that hides Him here and there, 
Bears the sure witness He is everywhere." 



ONE DUST. 

Thou, under Satan's fierce control, 
Shall Heaven its final rest bestow ? 

I know not, but I know a soul 

That might have fallen as darkly low. 

I judge thee not, what depths of ill 
Soe'er thy feet have found, or trod ; 

I know a spirit and a will 

As weak, but for the grace of God. 

Shalt thou with full-day laborers stand, 
Who hardly canst have pruned one vine ? 

I know not, but I know a hand 
With an infirmity like thine. 



MY CREED. 3 or 

Shalt thou who hast with scoffers part, 
E'er wear the crown the Christian wears ? 

I know not, but I know a heart 

As flinty, but for tears and prayers. 

Have mercy, O Thou Crucified ! 

For even while I name thy name, 
I know a tongue that might have lied 

Like Peter's, and am bowed with shame. 

Fighters of good fights — just, unjust — 
The weak who faint, the frail who fall — 

Of one blood, of the self-same dust, 
Thou, God of love, hast made them all. 



MY CREED 

I hold that Christian grace abounds 
Where charity is seen ; that when 

We climb to heaven, 'tis on the rounds 
Of love to men. 

I hold all else, named piety, 

A selfish scheme, a vain pretense ; 

Where centre is not, can there be 
Circumference ? 

This I moreover hold, and dare 

Affirm where'er my rhyme may go : 

Whatever things be sweet or fair, 
Love makes them so. 



302 RELIGIONS POEMS. 

Whether it be the lullabies 

That charm to rest the nursling bird, 
Or that sweet confidence of sighs 

And blushes, made without a word. 

Whether the dazzling and the flush 
Of softly sumptous garden bowers, 

Or by some cabin door, a bush 
Of ragged flowers. 



'Tis not the wide phylactery, 

Nor stubborn fast, nor stated prayers, 
That make us saints ; we judge the tree 

By what it bears. 

And when a man can live apart 
From works, on theologic trust, 

I know the blood about his heart 
Is dry as dust. 



LAST POEMS. 



SPENT AND MISSPENT. 

STAY-yet a little longer in the sky, 

O golden color of the evening sun ! 
Let not the sweet day in its sweetness die, 
. While my day's work is only just begun. 

Counting the happy chances strewn about 

Thick as the leaves, and saying which was best, 

The rosy lights of morning all went out, 
And it was burning noon, and time to rest. 

Then leaning low upon a piece of shade, 

Fringed round with violets and pansies sweet, 

My heart and I, I said, will be delayed, 

And plan our work while cools the sultry heat. 

Deep in the hills, and out of silence vast, 
A waterfall played up his silver tune ; 

My plans lost purpose, fell to dreams at last, 
And held me late into the afternoon. 

But when the idle pleasure ceased to please, 
And I awoke, and not a plan was planned, 

Just as a drowning man at what he sees 
Catches for life, I caught the thing at hand. 






304 LAST POEMS. 

And so life's little work-day hour has all 

Been spent and misspent doing what I could, 

And in regrets and efforts to recall 

The chance of having, being, what I would. 

And so sometimes I cannot choose but cry, 
Seeing my late-sown flowers are hardly set — 

O darkening color of the evening sky, 
Spare me the day a little longer yet I 



LAST AND BEST. 

Sometimes, when rude, cold shadows run 

Across whatever light I see ; 
When all the work that I have done, 

Or can do, seems but vanity ; 

I strive, nor vainly strive, to get 

Some little heart's-ease from the day 

When all the weariness and fret 
Shall vanish from my life away ; 

For I, with grandeur clothed upon, 
Shall lie in state and take my rest, 

And all my household, strangers grown, 
Shall hold me for an honored guest. 

But ere that day when all is set 
In order, very still and grand, 

And w^hile my feet are lingering yet 
Along this troubled border-land, 



IN THE DARK. 305 

What things will be the first to fade, 

And down to utter darkness sink ? 
The treasures that my hands have laid 

Where moth and rust corrupt, I think. 

And Love will be the last to wait 

And light my gloom with gracious gleams ; 

For Love lies nearer heaven's glad gate, 
Than all imagination dreams. 

Aye, when my soul its mask shall drop, 

The twain to be no more at one, 
Love, with its prayers, shall bear me up 

Beyond the lark's wings, and the sun. 



IN THE DARK. 

Has the Spring come back, my darling, 

Has the long and soaking rain 

Been moulded into the tender leaves 

Of the gay and growing grain — 

The leaves so sweet of barley and wheat 

All moulded out of the rain ? 

O, and I would I could see them grow, 

O, and I would I could see them blow, 

All over field and plain — 

The billows sweet of barley and wheat 

All moulded out of the rain. 

Are the flowers dressed out, my darling, 

In their kerchiefs plain or bright — 
20 



306 LAST POEMS. 

The groundwort gay, and the lady of May, 

In her petticoat pink and white ? 

The fair little flowers, the rare little flowers, 

Taking and making the light? 

O, and I would I could see them all, 

The little and low, the proud and tall, 

In their kerchiefs brave, and bright, 

Stealing out of the morns and eves, 

To braid embroidery round their leaves, 

The gold and scarlet light. 

Have the birds come back, my darling, 

The birds from over the sea ? 

Are they cooing and courting together 

In bush and bower and tree ? 

The mad little birds, the glad little birds, 

The birds from over the sea ! 

O, and I would I could hear them sing, 

O, and I would I could see them swing 

In the top of our garden tree ! 

The mad little birds, the glad little birds, 

The birds from over the sea ! 

Are they building their nests, my darling, 

In the stubble, brittle and brown ? 

Are they gathering threads, and silken shreds, 

And wisps of wool and down, 

With their silver throats and speckled coats, 

And eyes so bright and so brown ? 

O, and I would I could see them make 

And line their nests for love's sweet sake, 

With shreds of wqoI and down, 

With their eyes so bright and brown ! 



AN INVALID'S PLEA, 307 

AN INVALID'S PLEA. 

O Summer ! my beautiful, beautiful Summer ! 
. I look in thy face, and I long so to live ; 
But ah ! hast thou room for an idle new-comer, 

With all things to take, and with nothing to give ? 
With all things to take of thy dear loving-kindness, 

The wine of thy sunshine, the dew of thy air ; 
And with nothing to give but the deafness and blind- 
ness 

Begot in the depths of an utter despair ? 

As if the gay harvester meant but to screen her, 

The black spider sits in her low loom, and weaves : 
A lesson of trust to the tender-eyed gleaner 

That bears in her brown arms the gold of the 
sheaves. 
The blue-bird that trills her low lay in the bushes 

Provokes from the robin a merrier glee ; 
The rose pays the sun for his kiss with her blushes, 

And all things pay tithes to thee — all things but me ! 

At even, the fire-flies trim with their glimmers 

The wild, weedy skirts of the field and the wood ; 
At morning, those dear little yellow-winged swimmers, 

The butterflies, hasten to make their place good. 
The violet, alway so white and so saintly ; 

The cardinal, warming the frost with her blaze ; 
The ant, keeping house at her sand-hearth so quaintly, 

Reproaches my idle and indolent ways. 

When o'er the high east the red morning is breaking, 
And driving the amber of starlight behind, 



308 LAST POEMS. 

The land of enchantment I leave, on awaking, 
Is not so enchanted as that which I find. 

And when the low west by the sunset is flattered, 
And locust and katydid sing up their best, 

Peace comes to my thoughts, that were used to be flut- 
tered, 
Like doves when an eagle's wing darkens their nest. 

•The green little grasshopper, weak as we deem her, 

Chirps, day in and out, for the sweet right to live ; 
And canst thou, O Summer ! make room for a dreamer, 

With all things to take, and with nothing to give ? 
Room only to wrap her hot cheeks in thy shadows, 

And all on thy daisy-fringed pillows to lie, 
And dream of the gates of the glorious meadows, 

Where never a rose of the roses shall die ! 



THE GREAT QUESTION. 
" How are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come ? " 

The waves, they are wildly heaving, 

And bearing me out from the shore, 
And I know of the things I am leaving, 

But not of the things before. 
O Lord of Love, whom the shape of a dove 

Came down and hovered o'er, 
Descend to-night with heavenly light, 

And show me the farther shore. 

There is midnight darkness o'er me, 
And 'tis light, more light, I crave ; - 



A PENITENT'S PLEA. 309 

The billows behind and before me 

Are gaping, each with a grave : 
Descend to-night, O Lord of might, 

Who died our souls to save ; 
Descend to-night, my Lord, my Light, 

And walk with me on the wave ! 

My heart is heavy to breaking 

Because of the mourners' sighs, 
For they cannot see the awak'ning, 

Nor the body with which we arise. 
Thou, who for sake of men didst break* 

The awful seal of the tomb — 
Show them the way into life, I pray, 

And the body with which we come ! 

Comfort their pain and pining 

For the nearly wasted sands, 
With the many mansions shining 

In the house not made with hands : 
And help them by faith to see through death 

To that brighter and better shore, 
Where they never shall weep who are fallen asleep, 

And never be sick any more. 



A PENITENT'S PLEA. 

Like a child that is lost 
From its home in the night, 

I grope through the darkness 
And cry for the light ; 



310 LAST POEMS. 

Yea, all that is in me 
Cries out for the day — 

Come Jesus, my Master, 
Illumine my way ! 

In the conflicts that pass 

'Twixt my soul and my God, 
I walk as one walketh 

A fire-path, unshod ; 
And in my despairing 

Sit dumb by the way — 
Come Jesus, my Master, 

And heal me, I pray ! 

I know the fierce flames 

Will not cease to uproll, 
Till Thou rainest the dew 

Of thy love on my soul ; 
And I know the dumb spirit 

Will never depart, 
Till Thou comest and makest 

Thy house in my heart. 

My thoughts lie within me 

As waste as the sands ; 
O make them be musical 

Strings in thy hands ! 
My sins, red as scarlet, 

Wash white as a fleece — 
Come Jesus, my Master, 

And give me thy peace"! 



PUTTING OFF THE ARMOR. 311 



PUTTING OFF THE ARMOR. 



Why weep ye for the falling 
Of the transient twilight gloom? 

I am weary of the journey, 

And have come in sight of home. 



I can see a white procession 

Sweep melodiously along, 
And I would not have your mourning 

Drown the sweetness of their song. 

The battle-strife is ended ; 

I have scaled the hindering wall, 
And am putting off the armor 

Of the soldier — that is all ! 

Would you hide me from my pleasures ? 

Would you hold me from my rest? 
From my serving and my waiting 

I am called to be a guest ! 

Of its heavy, hurtful burdens 

Now my spirit is released : 
I am done with fasts and scourges, 

And am bidden to the feast. 



While you see the sun descending, 
While you lose me in the night, 

Lo, the heavenly morn is breaking, 
And my soul is in the light. 



312 LAST POEMS. 

I from faith to sight am rising 

While in deeps of doubt you sink ; 

'Tis the glory that divides us, 
Not the darkness, as you think. 

Then lift up your drooping eyelids, 
And take heart of better cheer; 

'Tis the cloud of coming spirits 
Makes the shadows that ye fear. 

O, they come to bear me upward 
To the mansion of the sky, 

And to change as I am changing 
Is to live, and not to die ; 

Is to leave the pain, the sickness, 
And the smiting of the rod, 

And to dw r ell among the angels, 
In the City of our God. 



LATER POEMS BY PHGEBE CARY. 



BALLADS. 



THE CHRISTMAS SHEAF. 

" Now, good-wife, bring your precious hoard," 

The Norland farmer cried ; 
" And heap the hearth, and heap the board, 

For the blessed Christmas-tide. 

" And bid the children fetch," he said, 
" The last ripe sheaf of wheat, 
And set it on the roof o'erhead, 
That the birds may come and eat. 

" And this we do for his dear sake, 
The Master kind and good, 
Who, of the loaves He blest and brake, 
Fed all the multitude." 

Then Fredrica, and Franz, and Paul, 
When they heard their father's words. 

Put up the sheaf, and one and all 
Seemed merry as the birds. 

Till suddenly the maiden sighed, 
The boys were hushed in fear, 
As, covering all her face, she cried, 
" If Hansei were but here ! " 



316 BALLADS. 

And when, at dark, about the hearth 

They gathered still and slow, 
You heard no more the childish mirth 

So loud an hour ago. 

And on their tender cheeks the tears 

Shone in the flickering light ; 
For they were four in other years 

Who are but three to-night. 

And tears are in the mother's tone ; 
As she speaks, she trembles, too : 
" Come, children, come, for the supper's done, 
And your father waits for you." 

Then Fredrica, and Franz, and Paul, 

Stood each beside his chair ; 
The boys were comely lads, and tall, 

The girl was good and fair. 

The father's hand was raised to crave 

A grace before the meat, 
When the daughter spake \ her words were brave, 

But her voice was low and sweet : 

* Dear father, should we give the wheat 
To all the birds of the air ? 
Shall we let the kite and the raven eat 
Such choice and dainty fare ? 

" For if to-morrow from our store 
We drive them not away, 
The good little birds will get no more 
Than the evil birds of prey." 



THE CHRISTMAS SHEAF. 317 

u Nay, nay, my child," he gravely said, 
" You have spoken to your shame, 
For the good, good Father overhead, 
" Feeds all the birds the same. 

"He hears the ravens when they cry, 
He keeps the fowls of the air ; 
And a single sparrow cannot lie 
On the ground without his care." 

" Yea, father, yea ; and tell me this," — 

Her words came fast and wild, — 
" Are not a thousand sparrows less 

To Him than a single child ? 

"Even though it sinned and strayed from home?" 
The father groaned in pain 
As she cried, " O, let our Hansei come 
And live with us again ! 

« 
" I know he did what was not right " — 

Sadly he shook his head ; 
"If he knew I longed for him to-night, 

He would not come," he said. 

" He went from me in wrath and pride ; 
God ! shield him tenderly ! 
For I hear the wild wind cry outside, 
Like a soul in agony." 

" Nay, it is a soul ! " O, eagerly 

The maiden answered then ; 
" And, father, what if it should be he, 

Come back to us again ! " 



318 BALLADS. 

She stops — - the portal open flies ; 
Her fear is turned to joy : 
"Hansei ! " the startled father cries ; 
And the mother sobs, " My boy ! " 

'Tis a bowed and humbled man they greet, 

With loving lips and eyes, 
Who fain would kneel at his father's feet, 

But he softly bids him rise ; 

And he says, " I bless thee, O mine own ; 

Yea, and thou shalt be blest ! " 
While the happy mother holds her son 

Like a baby on her breast. 

Their house and love again to share 

The Prodigal has come ! 
And now there will be no empty chair, 

Nor empty heart in their home. 

And they think, as they see their joy and pride 

Safe back in the sheltering fold, 
Of the child that was born at Christmas-tide 

In Bethlehem of old. 

And all the hours glide swift away 

With loving, hopeful words, 
Till the Christmas sheaf at break of day 

Is alive with happy birds ! 

[Note. — In Norway the last sheaf from the harvest-field is 
never threshed, but it is always reserved till Christmas Eve, 
when it is set up on the roof as a feast for the hungry birds.] 



LITTLE GOTTLIEB. 3T9 

LITTLE GOTTLIEB. 

A CHRISTMAS STORY. 

Across the German Ocean, 

In a country far from our own, 
Once, a poor little boy, named Gottlieb, 

Lived with his mother alone. 

They dwelt in the part of a village 

Where the houses were poor and small, 

But the home of little Gottlieb 
Was the poorest one of all. 

He was not large enough to work, 
And his mother could do no more 

(Though she scarcely laid her knitting down), 
Than keep the wolf from the door. 

She had to take their threadbare clothes, 

And turn, and patch, and darn ; 
For never any women yet 

Grew rich by knitting yarn. 

And oft at night, beside her chair, 

Would Gottlieb sit, and plan 
The wonderful things he would do for her, 

When he grew to be a man. 

One night she sat and knitted, 

And Gottlieb sat and dreamed, 
When a happy fancy all at once 

Upon his vision beamed. 



320 BALLADS. 

'Twas only a week till Christmas, 
And Gottlieb knew that then 

The Christ-child, who was born that day, 
Sent down good gifts to men. 

But he said, " He will never find us, 
Our home is so mean and small. 

And we, who have most need of them, 
Will get no gifts at all." 

When all at once, a happy light 
Came into his eyes so blue, 

And lighted up his face with smiles, 
As he thought what he could do. 

Next day when the postman's letters 
Came from all over the land ; 

Came one for the Christ-child, written 
•In a child's poor, trembling hand. 

You may think he was sorely puzzled 

What in the world to do ; 
So he went to the Burgomaster, 

As the wisest man he knew. 

And when they opened the letter, 
They stood almost dismayed 

That such a little child should dare 
To ask the Lord for aid. 

Then the Burgomaster stammered, 
And scarce knew what to speak, 

And hastily he brushed aside 

A drop, like a tear, from his cheek. 



LITTLE GOTTLIEB. ' 321 

Then up he spoke right gruffly, 
And turned himself about : 
u This must be a very foolish boy, 
And a small one, too, no doubt." 

But when six rosy children 

That night about him pressed, 
Poor, trusting little Gottlieb 

Stood near him, with the rest. 

And he heard his simple, touching prayer, 

Through all their noisy play ; 
Though he tried his very best to put 

The thought of him away. 

A wise and learned man was he, 

Men called him good and just ; 
But his wisdom seemed like foolishness, 

By that weak child's simple trust. 

Now when the morn of Christmas came, 
And the long, long week was done, 

Poor Gottlieb, who scarce could sleep, 
Rose up before the sun, 

And hastened to his mother, 

But he scarce might speak for fear, 

When he saw her wondering look, and saw 
The Burgomaster near. 

He wasn't afraid of the Holy Babe, 

Nor his mother, meek and mild ; 
But he felt as if so great a man 

Had never been a child. 






322 BALLADS, 

Amazed the poor child looked, to find 
The hearth was piled with wood, 

And the table, never full before, 
Was heaped with dainty food. 

Then half to hide from himself the truth, 

The Burgomaster said, 
While the mother blessed him on her knees, 

And Gottlieb shook for dread : 

" Nay, give no thanks, my good dame, 
To such as me for aid, 
Be grateful to your little son, 

And the Lord to whom he prayed ! " 

Then turning round to Gottlieb, 

" Your written prayer, you see, 
Came not to whom it was addressed, 
It only came to me ! 

" 'Twas but a foolish thing you did, 
As you must understand ; 
For though the gifts are yours, you know, 
You have them from my hand." 

Then Gottlieb answered fearlessly, 
Where he humbly stood apart, . 
" But the Christ-child sent them all the same, 
He put the thought in your heart ! " 



RELIGIOUS POEMS. 



CHRISTMAS. 

This happy day, whose risen sun 

Shall set not through eternity, 
This holy day when Christ, the Lord, 

Took on Him ou^humanity, 

For little children everywhere 
A joyous season still we make ; 

We bring our precious gifts to them, 
Even for the dear child Jesus' sake. 

The glory from the manger shed, 

Wherein the lowly Saviour lay, 
Shines as a halo round the+iead 

Of every human child to-day. 

And each unconscious infant sleeps 
Entrusted to his guardian care ; 

Hears his dear name in cradle hymns, 
And lisps it in its earliest prayer. 

Thou blessed Babe of Bethlehem ! 

Whose life we love, whose name we laud ; 
Thou Brother, through whose poverty, 

We have become the heirs of God : 



324 RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

Thou sorrowful, yet sinless Man — 
Tempted in all things like as we, 

Treading with tender, human feet, 
The sharp, rough way of Calvary 3 

We do remember how, by Thee, 

The sick were healed, the halting led ; 

How Thou didst take the little ones 
And pour thy blessings on their head. 

We know for what unworthy men 

Thou once didst deign to toil and live ; 
What weak and sinful women Thou 

Didst love, and pity, and forgive. 

m 

And, Lord, if to the sick and poor 
We go with generous hearts to-day, 

Or in forbidden places seek 

For such as wander from the way ; 

And by our loving words or deeds 
Make this a hallowed time to them ; 

Though we ourselves be found unmeet, 
For sin, to touch thy garment's hem ; 

Wilt Thou not, for thy wondrous grace, 

And for thy tender charity, 
Accept the good we do to these, 
As we had don£ it unto Thee ? 

And for the precious little ofles, 

Here from their native heaven astray, 

Strong in their very helplessness, 
To lead us in the better way ; 



PRODIGALS. 325 

If we shall make thy natal day 

A season of delight to these, 
A season always crowded full 

Of sweet and pleasant memories ; 

Wilt Thou not grant us to forget 
Awhile our weight of care and pain, 

And in their joys, bring back their joy 
Qf early innocence again ? 

O holy Child, about whose bed 

The virgin mother softly trod ; 
Dead once, yet living evermore, 

O Son of Mary, and of God ! 

If any act that we can do, 

If any thought of ours is right, 
If any prayer we lift to Thee, 

May find acceptance in thy sight, 

Hear us, and give to us, to-day, 

In answer to our earnest cries, 
Some portion of that sacred love, 

That drew Thee to us from the skies ! 



PRODIGALS. 

Again, in the Book of Books, to-day 
I read of that Prodigal, far away 

In the centuries agone, 
Who took the portion that to him fell, 
And went from friends and home to dwell 

In a distant land alone. 



326 RELIGIOUS POEMS, 

And when his riotous living was done, 
And his course of foolish pleasure run, 

And a fearful famine rose, 
He fain would have fed with the very swine, 
And no man gave him bread nor wine, 

For his friends were changed to foes. 

And I thought, when at last his state he knew, 
What a little thing he had to do, 

To win again his place : 
Only the madness of sin to learn, 
To come to himself, repent, and turn, 

And seek his Father's face. 

Then I thought however vile we are, 
Not one of us hath strayed so far 

From the things that are good and pure, 
But if to gain his home he tried 
*He would find the portal open wide, 

And find his welcome sure. 

My fellow-sinners, though you dwell 

In haunts where the feet take hold on hell, 

Where the downward way is plain ; 
Think, who is waiting for you at home, 
Repent, and come to yourself, and come 

To your Father's house again ! 

Say, out of the depths of humility, 
" I have lost the claim of a child on Thee, 

I would serve Thee with the least ! " 
And He will a royal robe prepare, 
He will call you son, and call you heir ; 

And seat you at the feast 



ST. BERNARD OF CLAIR VAUX. $2J 

Yea, fellow-sinner, rise to-day, 

And run till He meets you on the way, 

Till you hear the glad words said, — 
" Let joy through all the heavens resound 
For this, my son, who was lost is fowtd, 

And he lives who once was dead." 



ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX. 

In the shade of the cloister, long ago — 
They are dead and buried for centuries — ■ 

The pious monks walked to and fro, 
Talking of holy mysteries. 

By a blameless life and penance hard, 
Each brother there had proved his call ; 

But the one we name the St. Bernard 
Was the sweetest soul among them all. 

And oft as a silence on them fell, 

He would pause, and listen, and whisper low, 
"There is One who waits for me in my cell ; 
I hear Him calling, and I must go ! " 

No charm of human fellowship 

His soul from its dearest love can bind ; 

With a " jFesu Dulcis " on his lip, 

He leaves all else that is sweet behind. 

The only hand that he longs to take, 

Pierced, from the cross is reaching down ; 



328 RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

And the head he loves, for his dear sake 
Was wounded once with a thorny crown. 

Ah ! men and brethren, He whose call 

Drew that holy monk with a power divine, 

Was the One who is calling for us all, 

Was the Friend of sinners — yours and mine I 

From the sleep of the cradle to the grave, 
From the first low cry till the lip is dumb, 

Ready to help us, and strong to save, 
He is calling, and waiting till we come. 

Lord ! teach us always thy voice to know, 
And to turn to Thee from the world beside, 

Prepared when our time has come to go, 
Whether at morn or eventide. 

And to say when the heavens are rent in twain, 
When suns are darkened, and stars shall flee, 

Lo ! Thou hast not called for us in vain, 
And we shall not call in vain for Thee I 



OLD PICTURES. 

Old pictures, faded long, to-night 

Come out revealed by memory's gleam ; 

And years of checkered dark and light 
Vanish behind me like a dream. 



OLD PICTURES. 329 

I see the cottage, brown and low, 

The rustic porch, the roof-tree's shade, 

And all the place where long ago 
A group of happy children played. 

I see the brother, bravest, best, 

The prompt to act, the bold to speak ; 

The baby, dear and honored guest ! 
The timid sister, shy and meek. 

I see her loving face who oft 

Watched, that their slumbers might be sweet ; 
And his whose dear hand made so soft 

The path for all their tender feet. 

I see, far off, the woods whose screen 

Bounded the little world we knew ; 
And near, in fairy rings of green, 

The grass that round the door-stones grew. 

I watch at morn the oxen come, 

And bow their meek necks to the yoke ; 

Or stand at noontide, patient, dumb, 
In the great shadow of the oak. 

The barn with crowded mows of hay, 
And roof upheld by golden sheaves ; 

Its rows of doves, at close of day, 
Cooing together on the eaves. 

I see, above the garden-beds, 

The bee at work with laden wings ; 
The dandelions' yellow heads 

Crowding about the orchard spring ; 



33© RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

The little, sweet-voiced, homely thrush ; 

The field-lark, with her speckled breast; 
The finches in the currant-bush ; 

And where the blue-birds hid their nest. 

I see the comely apple-trees, 

In spring, a-blush with blossoms sweet; 
Or, bending with the autumn breeze, 

Shake down their ripe fruits at our feet. 

I see, when hurtling through the air 

The arrows of the winter flv, 
And all the frozen earth lies bare, 

A group about the hearth draw nigh, 

Of little ones that never tire 
Of stories told and told again ; 

I see the pictures in the fire, 

The firelight pictures in the pane. 

I almost feel the stir and buzz 
Of day ; the evening's holy calm ; 

Yea, all that made me what I was, 
And helped to make me what I am. 

Then lo ! it dies, as died our youth ; 

And things so strange about me seem, 
I know not what should be the truth, 

Nor whether I would wake or dream. 

I have not found to-day so vain, 
Nor yesterday so fair and good, 

That I would have my life again, 
And live it over, if I could. 



THE PLAYMATES. 33 1 

Not every hope for me has proved 
A house on weak foundation built ; 

I have not seen the feet I loved 
Caught in the awful snares of guilt. 

But when I see the paths so hard 

Kept soft and smooth in days gone by; 

The lives that years have made or marred, 
Out of my loneliness I cry : 

0,-for the friends that made so bright 
The days, alas ! too soon to wane ! 

O, but to be one hour to-night 
Set in their midst, a child again ! 



THE PLAYMATES. 

Two careless, happy children, 

Up when the east was red, 
And never tired and never still 

Till the sun had gone to bed ; 
Helping the winds in winter 

To toss the snows about ; 
Gathering the early flowers, 

When spring-time called them out ; 
Playing among the windrows 

Where the mowers mowed the hay ; 
Finding the place where the skylark 

Had hidden her nest away ; 
Treading the cool, damp furrows 

Behind the shining plough ; 



332 RELIGIOUS POEMS. 

Up m the barn with the swallows, 

And sliding over the mow ; 
Pleased with the same old stories, 

Heard a thousand times ; 
Believing all the wonders 

Written in tales or rhymes ; 
Counting the hours in summer 

When even a day seemed long ; 
Counting the hours in winter 

Till the time of leaves and song. 
Thinking it took forever 

For little children to grow, 
And that seventy years of a life-time 

Never could come and go. 
O, I know they were happier children 

Than the world again may see, 
For one was my little playmate 

And one, ah ! one was me ! 

A sad- faced man and woman, 

Leagues and leagues apart, 
Doing their work as best they may 

With weary hand and heart ; 
Shrinking from winter's tempests, 

And summer's burning heat ; 
Thinking that skies were brighter 

And flowers were once more sweet ; 
Wondering why the skylark 

So early trip s his wings ; 
And if green fields are hidden 

Beyond the gate where he sings ! 
Feeling that time is slipping 

Faster and faster away ; 



"THE BAREFOOT BOY:' 333 

That a day is but as a moment, 

And the years of life as a day ; 
Seeing the heights and places 

Others have reached and won ; 
Sighing o'er things accomplished, 

And things that are left undone ; 
And yet still trusting, somehow, 

In liis own good time to become 
Again as little children, 

In their Heavenly Father's home \ 
One crowding memories backward, 

In the busy, restless mart, 
One pondering on them ever, 

And keeping them in her heart ; 
Going on by their separate pathways 

To the same eternity — 
And one of these is my playmate, 

And one, alas ! is me ! 



" THE BAREFOOT BOY." 

Ah ! " Barefoot Boy ! " you havfe led me back 

O'er the waste of years profound, 
To the still, sweet spots, which memory 

Hath kept as haunted ground. 
You have led me back to the western hills, 

Where I played through the summer hours ; 
And called my little playmate up, 

To stand among the flowers. 



334 RELIGIOUS POEMS, 

We are hand in hand in the fields again, 

We are treading through the dew ! 
And not the poet's " barefoot boy," 

Nor him the artist drew, 
Is half so brave and bold and good, 

Though bright their colors glow, 
As the darling playmate that I had 

And lost, so long ago ! 

I touch the spring-time's tender grass, ' 

I find the daisy buds ; 
I feel the shadows deep and cool, 

In the heart of the summer woods; 
I see the ripened autumn nuts, 

Like thick hail strew the earth ; 
I catch the fall of the winter snow, 

And the glow of the cheerful hearth ! 

But alas ! my playmate, loved and lost, 

My heart is full of tears, 
For the dead and buried hopes, that are more 

Than our dead and buried years : 
And I cannot see the poet's rhymes, 

Nor the lines the artist drew, 
But only the boy that held my hand, 

And led my feet through the dew ! 



LOVE POEMS. 



AMY'S LOVE-LETTER. 

Turning some papers carelessly 

That were hid away in a desk unused, 

I came upon something yesterday 
O'er which I pondered and mused : 

A letter, faded now and dim, 

And stained in places, as if by tears ; 

And yet I had hardly thought of him 
Who traced its pages for years. 

Though once the happy tears made dim 
My eyes, and my blushing cheeks grew hot, 

To have but a single w r ord from him, 
Fond or foolish, no matter what. 

If he ever quoted another's rhymes, 
Poor in themselves and commonplace, 

I said them over a thousand times, 
As if he had lent them a grace. 

The single color that pleased his taste 
Was the only one I would have, or wear, 

Even in the girdle about my waist 
Or the ribbon that bound my hair. 



336 LOVE FOE. 

Then my flowers were the self-same kind and hue ; 

And yet how strangely one forgets — 
I cannot think which orfe of the two 

It was, or roses or \ 

But O, the visions I knew and nursed, 

While I walked in a world unseen before ! 

For my world began when I knew him first, 
And must end when he came no more. 

We would have died for each other's sake , 

Would have given all else in the world below ; 
And we said and thought that our hearts would break 
ten we parted, years ago. 

How the pain as well as the rapture seems 

:hing I scarce recall, 
Passed wholly out of my life and dreams, 
though it had never been at all. 

And is this the end, and is here the grave 

Of our steadfast love and our changeless faith, 

About which the poets sing and rave, 
Naming it strong as death ? 

At least 'tis what mine has come to at last, 

Stript of all charm and all disguise ; 
And I wonder if, when he thinks of the past, 

He thinks we were foolish or wis 

Well, I am content, so it matters not ; 

And; speaking about him, some one said — 
I wish I could only remember what — 

But he's either married or dead. 



DO YOU BLAME HER? 337 



DO YOU BLAME HER ? 

Ne'er lover spake in tenderer words, 
While mine were calm, unbroken ; 

Though I suffered all the pain I gave 
In the No, so firmly spoken. 

I marvel what he would think of me, 
Who called it a cruel- sentence, 

If he knew I had almost learned to-day 
What it is to feel repentance. 

For it seems like a strange perversity, 

And blind beyond excusing, 
To lose the thing we could have kept, 

And after, mourn the losing. 

And this, the prize I might have won, 
Was worth a queen's obtaining : 

And one, if far beyond my reach, 
I had sighed, perchance, for gaining. 

And I know — ah ! no one knows so well, 
Though my heart is far from breaking — 

'Twas a loving heart, and an honest hand, 
I might have had for the taking. 

And yet, though never one beside 
Has place in my thought above him, 

I only like him when he is by, 
'Tis when he is gone I love him. 

Sadly of absence poets sing, 

And timid lovers fear it ; 
22 



338 LOVE POEMS. 

But an idol has been worshipped less 
Sometimes when we came too near it. 

And for him my fancy throws to-day 

A thousand graces o'er him ; 
For he seems a god when he stands afar, 

And I kneel in my thought before him. 

But if he were here, and knelt to me 

With a lover's fond persistence, 
Would the halo brighten to my eyes 

That crowns him now in the distance ? 

Could I change the words I have said, and say, 

Till one of us two shall perish, 
Forsaking others, I take this man 

Alone, to love and to cherish ? 

Alas ! whatever beside to-day 

I might dream like a fond romancer, 

I know my heart so well that I know 
I should give him the self-same answer. 



SONG. 

Laugh out, O stream, from your bed of green, 
Where you lie in the sun's embrace ; 

And talk to the reeds that o'er you lean 
To touch your dimpled face ; 

But let your talk be sweet as it will, 
And your laughter be as gay, 



SOMEBODY'S LOVERS. 339 

You cannot laugh as I laugh in my heart, 
For my lover will come to-day ! 

Sing sweet, little bird, sing out to your mate 

That hides in the leafy grove ; 
Sing clear and tell him for him you wait, 

And tell him of all your love ; 
But though you sing till you shake the buds 

And the tender leaves of May, 
My spirit thrills with a sweeter song, 

For my lover must come to-day ! 

Come up, O winds, come up from the south 

With eager hurrying feet, 
And kiss your red rose on her mouth 

In the bower where she blushes sweet ; 
But you. cannot kiss your darling flower, 

Though you clasp her as you may, 
As I kiss in my thought the lover dear 

I shall hold in my arms to-day ! 



SOMEBODY'S LOVERS. 

Too meek by half was he who came 

A-wooing me one morn, 
For he thought so little of himself 

I learned to share his scorn. 

At night I had a suitor, vain 
As the vainest in the land ; 

Almost he seemed to condescend 
In the offer of his hand. 



340 LOVE POEMS. 

In one who pressed his suit I missed 

Courage and manly pride ; 
And how could I think of such a one 

As a leader and a guide ? 

And then there came a worshipper 
With such undoubting trust, 

That when he knelt he seemed not worth 
Upraising from the dust. 

The next was never in the wrong, 
Was not too smooth nor rough ; 

So faultless and so good was he, 
That that was fault enough. 

But one, the last of all who came, 

I know not how to paint ; 
No angel do I seem to him — 

He scarcely calls me saint ! 

He hath such sins and weaknesses 

As mortal man befall ; 
He hath a thousand faults, and yet 

I love him with them all ! 

He^never asked me yea nor nay, 

Nor knelt to me one hour ; 
But he took my heart, and holds my heart 

With a lover's tender power. 

And I bow, as needs I must, and say, 

In proud humility, 
Love's might is right, and I yield at last 

To manhood's royalty ! 



LAST POEMS. 



NOBODY'S CHILD. 

Only a newsboy, under the light 

Of the lamp-post plying his trade in vain : 
Men are too busy to stop to-night, 

Hurrying home through the sleet and rain. 
Never since dark a paper sold ; 

Where shall he sleep, or how be fed ? 
He thinks as he shivers there in the cold, 

While happy children are safe abed. 

Is it strange if he turns about 

With angry words, then comes to blows, 
When his little neighbor, just sold out, 
Tossing his pennies, past him goes ? 
" Stop ! " — some one looks at him, sweet and mild, 

And the voice that speaks is a tender one : 
" You should not strike such a little child, 

And you should not use such words, my son ! " 

Is it his anger or his fears 

That have hushed his voice and stopped his arm ? 
" Don't tremble," these are the words he hears ; 
" Do you think that I would do you harm ? " 



342 LAST POEMS. 

"It isn't that," and the hand drops down ; 
"I wouldn't care for kicks and blows ; 
But nobody ever called me son, 

Because I'm nobody's child, I s'pose." 

O men ! as ye careless pass along, 

Remember the love that has cared for you ; 
And blush for the awful shame and wrong 

Of a world where such a thing could be true I 
Think what the child at your knee had been 

If thus on life's lonely billows tossed ; 
And who shall bear the weight of the sin, 

If one of these " little ones " be lost ! 



JOHN G. WHITTIER. 

Great master of the poet's art ! 

Surely the sources of thy powers 
Lie in that true and tender heart 

Whose every utterance touches ours. 

For, better than thy words, that glow 
With sunset dyes or noontide heat, 

That count the treasures of the snow, 
Or paint the blossoms at our feet, 

Are those that teach the sorrowing how 
To lay aside their fear and doubt, 

And in submissive love to bow 
To love that passeth finding out 



THOU KNOWEST. 343 

And thou for such hast come to be 
In every home an honored guest — 

Even from the cities by the sea 
To the broad prairies of the West 

Thy lays have cheered the humble home 
Where men who prayed for freedom knelt ; 

And women, in their anguish dumb, 
Have heard thee utter what they felt. 

And thou hast battled for the right 

With many a brave and trenchant word, 

And shown us how the pen may fight 
A mightier battle than the sword. 

And therefore men in coming years 
Shall chant thy praises loud and long ; 

And women name thee through their tears 
A poet greater than his song. 

But not thy strains, with courage rife, 
Nor holiest hymns, shall rank above 

The rhythmic" beauty of thy life, 
Itself a canticle of love ! 



THOU KNOWEST. 



Lord, with what body do they come 
Who in corruption here are sown, 

When, with humiliation done, 

They wear the likeness of thine own ? 



344 LAST POEMS. 

Lord, of what manner didst Thou make 
The fruits upon life's healing tree ? 

Where flows that water we may take 
And thirst not through eternity ? 

Where lie the beds of lilies prest 
By virgins whiter than their snow ? 

What can we liken to the rest 
Thy well-beloved yet shall know? 

And where no moon shall shine by night, 
No sun shall rise and take his place, 

How shall we look upon the light, 
O, Lamb of God, that lights thy face ? 

How shall we speak our joy that day 
We stand upon the peaceful shore, 

Where blest inhabitants shall say, 
Lo ! we are sick and sad no more ? 

What anthems shall they raise to Thee, 
The host upon the other side ? 

What will our depths of rapture be 
When heart and soul are satisfied ? 

How will life seem when fear, nor dread, 
Nor mortal weakness chains our powers ; 

When sin is crushed, and death is dead, 
And all eternity is ours ? 

When, with our lover and our Spouse, 

We shall as angels be above, 
And plight no troths and breathe no vows, 

How shall we tell and prove our love ? 



LIGHT. 345 

How can we take in faith thy hand, 
And walk the way that we must tread ? 

How can we trust and understand 

That Christ will raise us from the dead ? 

We cannot see nor know to-day, 

For He hath made us of the dust ; 
We can but wait his time, and say, 

Even though He slay me, will I trust ! 

Swift to the dead we hasten now, 
And know not even the way we go ; 

Yet quick and dead are thine, and Thou — • 
Thou knowest all we do not know ! 



LIGHT. 

While I hid mine eyes, I feared ; 

The heavens in wrath seemed bowed ; 
I look, and the sun with a smile breaks forth, 

And a rainbow spans the cloud. 

I thought the winter was here, 
That the earth was cold and bare, 

But I feel the coming of birds and flowers, 
And the spring-time in the air. 

I said that all the lips 

I ever had kissed were dumb ; 
That my dearest ones were dead and gone, 

And never a friend would come. 



346 LAST POEMS. 

But I hear a voice as sweet 

As the fall of summer showers ; 

And the grave that yawned at my very feet 
Is filled to the top with flowers ! 

As if 'twere the midnight hour, 

I sat with gloom opprest ; 
When a light was breaking out of the east, 

And shining unto the west. 

I heard the angels call 

Across from the beautiful shore ; 
And I saw a look in my darling's eyes, 

That never was there before. 

Transfigured, lost to me, 

She had slipped from my embrace ; 
Now lo ! I hold her fast once more, 

With the light of God on her face ! 



WAITING THE CHANGE. 

I have no moan to make, 

No bitter tears to shed \ 
No heart, that for rebellious grief, 

Will not be comforted. 

There is no friend of mine 
Laid in the earth to sleep ; 

No grave, or green or heaped afresh, 
By which I stand and weep. 



WAITING THE CHANGE. 347 

Though some, whose presence once 

Sweet comfort round me shed, 
Here in the body walk no more 

The way that I must tread, 

Not they, but what they wore 

Went to the house of fear ; 
They were the incorruptible, 

They left corruption here. 

The veil of flesh that hid 

Is softly drawn aside ; 
More clearly I behold them now 

Than those who never died. 

Who died ! what means that word 

Of men so much abhorred ? 
Caught up in clouds of heaven to be 

Forever with the Lord ! 

To give this body, racked 

With mortal ills and cares, 
For one as glorious and ^ fair, 

As our Redeemer wears ; 

To leave our shame and sin, 

Our hunger and disgrace ; 
To come unto ourselves, to turn 

And find our Father's face ; 

To run, to leap, to walk, 

To quit our beds of pain, 
And live where the inhabitants 

Are never sick again ; 



348 LAST POEMS. 

To sit no longer dumb, 

Nor halt, nor blind \ to rise — 

To praise the Healer with our tongue, 
And see Him with our eyes ; 

To leave cold winter snows, 
And burning summer heats, 

And walk in soft, white, tender light, 
About the golden streets. 

Thank God ! for all my loved, 

That out of pain and care, 
Have safely reached the heavenly heights, 

And stay to meet me there ! 

Not these I mourn ; I know 
Their joy by faith sublime — 

But for myself, that still below 
Must wait my appointed time. 



THOU AND I. 

Strange, strange for thee and me, 

Sadly afar ; 
Thou safe beyond, above, 

I 'neath the star ; 
Thou where flowers deathless spring, 

I where they fade ; 
Thou in. God's paradise, 

I 'mid time's shade ! 



THOU AND I. 349 

Thou where each gale breathes balm, 

I tempest-tossed ; 
Thou where true joy is found, 

I where 'tis lost ; 
Thou counting ages thine, 

I not the morrow ; 
Thou learning more of bliss, 

I more of sorrow. 

Thou in eternal peace, 

I 'mid earth's strife ; 
Thou where care hath no name, 

I where 'tis life ; 
Thou without need of hope, 

I where 'tis vain ; 
Thou with wings dropping light, 

I with time's chain. 

Strange, strange for thee and me, 

Loved, loving ever ; 
Thou by Life's deathless fount, 

I near Death's river ; 
Thou winning Wisdom's love, 

I strength to trust ; 
Thou 'mid the seraphim, 

I in the dust ! 



35<> t-AST POEMS. 



SPRING FLOWERS. 1 

sweet and charitable friend, 
Your gift of fragrant bloom 

Has brought the spring-time and the woods, 
To cheer my lonesome room. 

It rests my weary, aching eyes, 
And soothes my heart and brain ; 

To see the tender green of the leaves, 
And the blossoms wet with rain. 

1 know not which I love the most, 

Nor which the comeliest shows, 
The timid, bashful violet, 
Or the royal-hearted rose : 

The pansy in her purple dress, 

The pink with cheek of red, 
Or the faint, fair heliotrope, who hangs, 

Like a bashful maid, her head. 

For I love and prize you one and all, 
From the least low bloom of spring 

To the lily fair, whose clothes outshine 
The raiment of a king. 

And when my soul considers these, 

The sweet, the grand, the gay, 
I marvel how we shall be clothed 

With fairer robes than they ; 

1 The last poem written by Phoebe Cary. 



SPRING FLOWERS. 

And almost long to sleep, and rise, 
And gain that fadeless shore, 

And put immortal splendor on, 
And live, to die no more. 



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